“I know that you now consume many social networks and we are at a time when there is a dangerous fashion, with speeches with which we are getting involved, that launches negationist messages, ensuring that machismo does not exist and that those who ask for equality are ‘feminazis’. Don’t buy that speech, develop your own critical thinking.”
The Delegate of the Government, Sabrina Moh, has participated in an event organized by the IES Enrique Nieto, on the occasion of the 8M, under the title ‘Women Referents’, which took place last Friday and was attended by a large group of first and second grade students of Baccalaureate.
The head of the Government Delegation has taken part in this initiative together with the Provincial Director of Education, Elena Fernández Treviño; the Head of the Coordination Unit Against Violence Against Women, Laura Segura; the Territorial Director of the Imserso, Verónica Aznar; and the Chief Prosecutor of the Area Prosecutor’s Office of Melilla, Laura Santa Pau; in which students of Enrique Nieto have been able to ask questions and raise reflections.
“Many women before us have struggled to break glass ceilings and with that sticky floor. All that work cannot be broken now by a dangerous fashion,” Moh argued, referring to the proliferation of sexist discourses that can be seen on different digital platforms.
“The advice I give you, if you allow me to give you one, is not that you don’t buy everything that they put before you and that you develop your own critical thinking and that you are aware that machismo exists and that we have to continue working for equality,” he said.
“We don’t want to discriminate against men. On the contrary, we want to have him by our side, fighting for the same cause,” he said. Delving into this idea, he stressed that this is “a collective struggle” and that “we have to start from a very young age”, so he pointed out to the audience that “you are a key piece right now”.
In her speech, the highest representative of the Spanish Government in our city stressed that “it is important to be clear about what feminism means and what feminism represents”.
“Let’s not be fooled by the fact that feminism means that women pretend to be above men. It is not true,” he stressed, and stressed that “until we understand that feminism is fighting for real and effective equality, which is to be in the same conditions, we will have learned absolutely nothing.” A struggle for equality, he has apostilled, in which men are fundamental.
Mirage of equality
The Provincial Director of Education, for her part, has made it clear that before reaching the institutions they were already people committed to equality. “We have not been convinced by the institutions, we have not become feminists and egalitarians when we have come to office, but we have been doing so and we wanted to be in our workplace with that struggle,” she explained.
A very important task, he added, especially when male violence is “a reality that right now is urgent, urgent and needs to be addressed” from Education “and from all united institutions”.
In fact, she recalled that, since 2013, 1,300 women have been killed for gender violence and 62 children have been killed for gender violence against their mothers. “We have to act and soon, and from education, for prevention so that this does not happen,” he said.
In his speech, he pointed out that, although today’s society is apparently egalitarian, “it lives in a mirage of equality” based on the fact that “we have the best laws that currently exist in Europe in terms of equality, but on a real level, in everyday life, women still suffer a lot of discrimination, a lot of situations in which we are not equal to our male counterparts”.
Fernández Treviño has pointed out that women suffer machismo in their daily work but they live even more when a woman works in the field of equality, given that “when we call ourselves feminists in the public, they make you a suit: ‘Feminazi’, ‘radical’, ‘who has a biased view of reality’… when it’s not like that, it has nothing to do with it”. “It is enough to approach a feminist woman and talk to her to realize that she does not want to impose anything or anyone, but claims an equality that we should all claim,” he said. “And that’s not being feminazi, that’s being egalitarian and fair,” she said.
An inequality that is evident, he added, especially when the machista murders are “the greatest expression of inequality” but in everyday life “we earn less salaries, we have difficulties with conciliation and co-responsibility, we suffer sexual abuse, we are underrepresented in public bodies…”.
1,300 women killed
In her speech, the Head of the Coordination against Violence against Women of the Government Delegation in Melilla, Laura Segura, explained that if a part of society is not able to see the inequality that exists, it is precisely because such inequality is part of reality.
“Society doesn’t see inequality because we live in a sexist society,” he said. “We have all been educated in a male chauvinistic culture. The important thing is to have the ability, little by little, to see inequality and we do that from the educational level,” he said.
“When we talk about wearing our glasses, what we do is gradually detecting those inequalities that cross us as a society and that cross us to the people themselves,” he added.
Therefore, he has defended that, from the educational level, “what we do is try to remove from your ‘gender backpacks’ all those inequalities that you bring, sometimes from home, sometimes from the group of equals, from what you see daily in media and networks, and try to eliminate those inequalities”.
Thus, Segura has stressed that the maximum expression of inequality between men and women is violence against women that, in certain situations, ends in deadly violence. “There are 1,300 women murdered in our country since we have data. In Melilla alone we have 245 women with police protection, that is to say women who have denounced, asked for help and have police protection”, he said.
Segura has given these data while stressing that only 20% of women suffering from gender violence are reported. In addition, 80 per cent of those women who complain have minor children.
Not only that, there are more than 60 minors who have been killed just to do the greatest possible harm to their mother and so far this year they already raise to 6 women who have been killed at the hands of their partners or former partners.
Fighting from the system
The Chief Prosecutor of the Melilla Area, Laura Santa Pau, in her speech acknowledged that, from a very young age, “I wanted to fight against injustices because throughout my life I have seen that women are treated differently and that leads to inequality and discrimination.”
“I wanted to fight that. And I’ve always understood that to be able to fight something you have to do it from within. From within the system,” he argued.
With regard to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Santa Pau has explained that the first female prosecutor entered in 1937, at the time of the Republic, in Albacete. However, she was murdered in 1938 and there was no fiscal woman again, because it was forbidden in Spain, until 1974.
In these 51 years “we have managed to make 66% of the members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office women. We are already in the majority,” she said, recalling that there have been three State Attorneys General who have been women. The first in 2015, Consuelo Madrigal. The second in 2018, María José Segarra and the third, María Dolores Delgado, in the year 2020. In addition, the first President of the General Council of the Judiciary, which is the governing body of judges, has just been appointed.
“In the Public Prosecutor’s Office, we have made progress for a long time in the field of equality,” he said and, in fact, he indicated that, in the management categories, there are currently 54% of men and 46% of women. And as far as Area Chiefs are concerned, “we are 65% women”.
The sum of all
The Territorial Director of Imserso, Verónica Aznar, has addressed the step she took when she took over the entity in Melilla and “has allowed me to contact the elderly, the dependent people, the disability, with such vulnerable groups and offered me the opportunity to reconnect with that social commitment”.
Aznar has assured that when a woman faces a responsibility she must do so with a double effort, both from a professional point of view and by the fact of being a woman. Thus, in his address, he recounted how, as soon as he entered office at the head of the Imserso, a person assured him that he would not be able to face responsibility by referring to the fact that he was a woman and to his age.
However, that attitude “made me stronger”, he acknowledged and recalled that he got to work fully with the team of professionals that he has in the Imserso, which has earned the respect of the team
A work that is developed by women at the head of institutions that, he has apostilled, serves as a mirror and reference for the next generations. “If you add up the women’s work, a lot of ‘a little’ do a lot. So you have to have a commitment that goes beyond the professional in your daily life,” he said.