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I’m branching out a bit this month to stick up for women who are treated unfairly. After all, is being “green” just about the physical environment? For me, it’s tied closely to the idea that it‘s a good thing to try and avoid living your life in a way that fucks things up for other people. But doing so in our society with biased information about what is really going on and with Subway sandwiches that taste so good is, unfortunately, a brainer.
Women in Western Europe are more likely to be victims of sexual assault than they are to get breast cancer. I heard that last week, and it sent my ball rolling with a whole stream of questions about the ways in which we are influenced by lobbyists, marketing strategists and “nice” vs. “taboo” subjects. Everyone I know has had either an aunt or a mother affected by breast cancer, and it is probably because it is such a touchy subject that the following is also true: last year in the UK the combined incomes of three prominent charities in the violence-against-women sector came to less than the amount that was given to a donkey sanctuary - fine if those giving are genuinely passionate about donkeys. Here in Barcelona there are over 200 organisations listed by the Ajuntament under the rubric “violència contra les dones”, but finding statistics on either their funding or the popularity of donkeys proves difficult.
Is sexism rife in Spain? Ask Carme Chacón, the Catalan recently accused by El Mundo of offending the traditional values of the Spanish Army for being Spain’s Minister of Defence and at the same time female and pregnant. Do women wear less clothing than men on Spanish television? At my workplace, women are addressed by their first names and men by their surnames; in the schools in Barcelona which use uniforms, the girls wear skirts. (I have a larger than average problem with this one. What is the point of skirts? To sum up my anthropology thesis in less than a para-graph: are they for comfort? Sometimes. Is it because they are attractive and show off a bit of leg? Nearly always. Why are teenage girls forced to wear them?)
The bad news is that 71 women were killed in Spain by their partners last year. The good news is that things are improving. Zapatero once said he was a feminist, and his recently appointed cabinet includes more women than men for the first time in European history. Let’s hope he doesn’t just want to look up skirts during meetings.
Catalonia is even further ahead, having just introduced a law aimed at widening the public’s perspective on what constitutes violence and having allocated €24 million to improve their approach to individual cases. The main thing is that it’s being brought out into the open that men are perverts. Men are perverts! Well, we all know that, but for the perverts who believe women are inferior and mistreat them, things are getting tougher.
Ladies, please remember this law gives you no excuse to denounce the next man who pushes in front of you on the metro.
Organisations for victims:
CAVAS: 915 740 110 // www.violacion.org
Institut Català de les dones: 900 900 120 www.gencat.net/icdona/
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