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Santo Domingo (EFE).- The Spanish Secretary of State for Equality and Against Gender Violence, Ángela Rodríguez, is self-critical and admits that, given the latest data on femicides, it is urgent to “better refine the responses” given to the women when they report abuse.
“You have to be self-critical and recognize that you can improve and that there are things that could be done differently,” says Rodríguez in an interview with EFE in Santo Domingo, where he has participated in the IV Ibero-American Gender Conference held this Thursday and Friday. .
Although it indicates that the fear of going to or calling the institutions to tell that violence is being suffered is being overcome, Rodríguez considers it “worrying” that many of the victims of the latest femicides had filed a complaint, for which, he acknowledges, “the response It is not being the best possible ».
The importance of education against violence
Hence the importance that Rodríguez attaches to the State Strategy to combat Sexist Violence (“it is the pillar that sustains the house”), since, endowed with 2,308 million euros, it serves to plan the roadmap in this regard in the next four years, ranging from hiring specialized gender police officers to shelters or the 016 telephone number.
In his opinion, education from school is essential to prevent these situations, because, he stresses, “learning this from a young age is what can lay the foundations for us to treat ourselves differently and, obviously, it is the best way to prevent the sexist violence”.
Violence is still there, alert, “it is part of our culture, of our way of organizing ourselves socially, politically, and economically, and that is why it is so important that, when we think about solutions to combat it, we think about it from the structural point of view.”
Penalties and the law of sexual freedom
The Secretary of State also talks about the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, known as the “law of only yes is yes”, and insists that the sentences have not been lowered, what has occurred is “a change of system, of how those sentences are counted”.
“If at this time we have more provincial courts that have not reduced sentences than those that have” have done so and in most cases the sentences are maintained, “we continue to defend that the criminal proposal is solid (…) This makes us to think that the problem is not the law”, regardless of whether measures can be taken for “the correct implementation of the norm, a task that now lies ahead”.
Regarding the controversy in Castilla y León over the “pro-life” measures proposed by Vox, Rodríguez states that the regional government, at the request of the central office, “has already said that they are not going to carry out the protocol” and adds: “I understand that It has been a macho alert that finally and fortunately has been left in borage water ».
He criticizes the “flat earth” arguments of the extreme right and the desire to ignore, even, the statements of the World Health Organization (WHO) that a woman cannot be forced to see an ultrasound of the fetus before interrupting the pregnancy.
“Transformative measures” of the abortion law
Rodríguez also talks about the reform of the law on voluntary interruption of pregnancy, which is in the Senate.
«These are measures that, I think, are going to be very transformative and come to change a type of sexual culture in which we women are the ones who are always in the passive position, we cannot decide when to be mothers, when not to have children and neither about our sexuality (…) I am confident that in Spain we will not only win the battle and not have a United States 2.0, but that we will also be able to advance a law that is better for all women”, she highlights.
The law contemplates that abortion can be done from the age of 16 in public health, in the hospital closest to home, and regulates conscientious objection, which “we believe is one of the fundamental obstacles that women have today to be able to access to the exercise of this right”.
But it is also “a very advanced law” due to other proposals such as those related to menstrual health, sex education, free feminine hygiene products in schools and social centers or the male contraceptive pill.
