“The State Pact against Gender Violence is finally being renewed. In 2017 we had the Pact of State and it was fundamental to renew it and, in addition, to do so with a much more transversal line, broadening our gaze in terms of violence against women.”
The Head of the Coordination Unit against Violence against Women of the Government Delegation in Melilla, Laura Segura, in an interview granted to the COPE network, has pointed out that “there were violence that today we consider as such and that, however, they were not reflected in the State Pact, such as economic violence itself or as is the awareness about vicarious violence”.
Therefore, a few days ago the Ministry of Equality and the Government Delegation against Gender Violence held a meeting with the Coordination and Violence against Women Units of the Government Delegations throughout the national territory to address the new measures contained in the State Pact and how they affect the Units.
In addition, Segura has explained that there is also a key aspect of how is the monitoring of funds from the Government Delegations and Subdelegations. Some funds, he said, are expanded and used by the Autonomous Communities and Cities “and it is important that we follow up, that these funds are destined to each of the measures and axes that appear in the State Pact, which are also well defined, awareness campaigns that are focused on these strategic lines and, in addition, with the special sensitivity established by the State Pact itself, education measures, those that include the media, measures that have to do with State Security Forces and Bodies, training professionals…”
“The idea was, above all, that all the Units should be very clear about where these measures should go, that we follow up the funds of the State Pact in each of our communities and reinforce the interinstitutional work that we are doing among the Administrations all the Units,” he summarized.
In addition, he pointed out that within the State Pact, the role of the Units themselves is reinforced, “that we are the eyes of the State in each of the territories”, and their coordinating role.
Education and Violence
During the radio interview, the Head of the Unit explained that one of the 10 Axes of the State Pact against Gender Violence is education. “We need a co-educational school,” said Segura, who defended that the Education Law “is a co-educational law, but for that we have to train all professionals who are in the educational field, that these Equality Plans permeate all classrooms, and that they also permeate the curriculum, not only certain specific moments or transversal activities, but they have to permeate the curriculum and truly be educated equally from the earliest ages.”
As he pointed out, the collective imagination of young people is what they are seeing in our society. “It’s nothing different from what’s going on.”
“It is true that those messages that we understood could not be accepted, that are so negative and so harmful to violence and, above all, to the victims, are now taken up again,” he warned.
In the words of Laura Segura, there is a problem with social networks since “the messages that are coming out completely counteract all those equality policies and all these messages that we are trying to get through.”
However, the head of the Unit has clarified that “there are girls who increasingly understand the importance of equal work, who consider that feminism is fundamental and that feminism saves lives”. To this is added that “there are also many boys who are accompanying feminist women and are feminist boys,” she said.
Thus, he recalled that, when he began to give the talks of the Master Plan in the schools in 2018, “they coincided practically with this rearmament of negationalism and the extreme right.” However, Segura attends these talks “with the data, with the reality of violence, and explaining very clearly what feminism is, counteracting that very negative idea that is coming to them.”
In fact, he pointed out that his goal is to leave the classrooms “thinking that each one of you is an active agent against gender violence and, if in this classroom there is a girl who is suffering violence as a couple or a boy who may be suffering it at home, because her mother is suffering it, that the partner who is close to her knows that she is going to support him and that her teachers too.”