Laura de Grado | Cristina Bazán | Anne Amondarain | Carmen Sigüenza Macarena Baena
Madrid (EFE).- Thousands of anonymous women work every day from different parts of the world to improve the lives of thousands of other people and make visible and denounce the inequalities and discrimination that women suffer for the mere fact of being women.
When 8M, International Women’s Day, is celebrated, Efeminista -a portal of the EFE agency specialized in feminism- compiles the story of eight incredible women, such as María del Carmen, who fights to improve the lives of prisoners, young people or women. migrant people; Flavia’s, so that women have the space that corresponds to them in politics; that of Aura, for achieving the economic independence of the indigenous women; or Erika’s, for making a name for herself and being a benchmark for thousands of young people in the masculinized world of freestyle.
Along with them, the lives of María Cristina accompanying women to abort in places where women’s rights are not respected; those of Lola and Costa Badía, fighting every day to make visible the problems that women with disabilities face in spaces such as cinema or art; or that of Verónica who, with her work and her example, claims that social and environmental sustainability will be feminist or it will not be.
María del Carmen Alonso, United Mothers against Drugs
More than 40 years have passed since María del Carmen Alonso Martínez gave her life to the social struggle linked to denouncing the drug problem, prison conditions or the situation of migrants.
He arrived in Madrid at the age of 17, but it was not until one of his four children began catechesis, when he landed in the San Carlos Borromeo parish, in Entrevías, and he began to be interested in the topics that were discussed there: the situation in the jails, drugs, corruption and crime. She joined a group of “very fighting” mothers, with whom she organized in the Mothers United Against Drugs association.
From there they denounced corruption in police stations, they made the drug problem visible by traveling throughout Spain, they obtained pardons so that young people incarcerated who were going to die from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome could do so “at home with dignity”, and in the face of culture from repression and punishment, they defended social measures and affection.
Flavia Freidenberg, Network of Political Scientists
For many years, Argentinian researcher Flavia Freidenberg did not perceive that women experienced inequalities in the academy, but not because they did not exist, she confesses, but because “she had a great veil” over her eyes.
Until one day, settled in Mexico to study the political representation of women, a friend’s comment about the absence of experts on a panel removed that veil. “At that moment I grab my Twitter and write: Today we are going to start a civic action. If you see a ‘Manel’, that is, a panel only for men, if you listen to a radio program, if you are in front of the television and see a program where only men are quoted, if you go to a conference and only see that there are men, take a picture of it, upload it online and use the hashtag #NoSinMujeres”.
Thus began to take shape Network of Political Scientists, a project “of women in their diversity”, which came to light in 2016 and is made up of more than 800 specialists who live or work on issues related to Latin America. The Network is in charge of making visible the work they do and the inequalities experienced by the experts in a discipline historically led by men.
Aura Melba, indigenous leader
The economic autonomy of women was always the banner of struggle of the Awá indigenous leader Aura Melba López. After years of field work in her native Barbacoas, Colombia, she was elected governor – a public authority that represents the community – of the Nunalbí Alto Ulbí reservation in the municipality of Barbacoas, Nariño, and despite her authority, she suffered discrimination.
Despite this, López worked hard for the unity and culture of the Awá people and opted for the strengthening of their own government. She was re-elected 7 consecutive years.
In this work, she realized that women were being “consumers and not producers”, that they did not have “their own economic income” and she saw the need to take ownership of the productive process. So she was formed and, together with a partner and a partner, launched the El Maíz Agricultural Farm and Livestock Association: five years later, 18 women and 3 men participate in this empowerment project.
Erika Dos Santos, a benchmark for freestyle in Spain
Being a pioneer has not been easy for the Madrid rapper Erika Dos Santos. For a long time she felt “insecure” and “undervalued”, because she had assumed that women could not participate in freestyle spaces, but when she saw the Catalan Jess participate in a battle, the world changed her.
Now it is she, one of the first women, along with fellow rapper Sara Socas, to advance to a Red Bull Battle semifinal in 2019, who tries to flatten the path and put “the foot in the door” for other women who want to enter and ascend to this world.
Her first battle was won on a symbolic level, when during her second Red Bull, in 2017, she was the first woman to go through the round and reach the test that was called ‘The Last Man’. With Erika’s presence, the organization decided to change the name to ‘La última oportunidad’. She currently teaches rap workshops in schools, in juvenile centers, in her neighborhood… convinced of the power of metrics and rhymes as a tool for social transformation.
María Cristina Campos, abortion companion
Although the feminist struggle for the autonomy of the body has gained ground in Latin America and the green tide has spread to several countries, many girls, adolescents, women and other pregnant people who abort continue to carry the weight of the stigma that exists in society. . That is why the work of Chilean psychologist María Cristina Campos, who has been working on abortion issues for 10 years, is vital in this process.
Campos is part of the abortion accompaniment network “Con las amigas y en la casa”, the largest in Chile, but is also part of the Red Compañera – Latin American and Caribbean feminist network of abortion accompanists, which brings together 23 movements in 17 countries of the region.
The accompaniment provided by the networks throughout the region is vital, but particularly important in countries where abortion is totally penalized, as in many of Central America. “Places where escorts cannot say that they are escorts because they are persecuted and imprisoned. However, we are there raising strategies that allow them to continue being companions and to continue performing abortions”.
Lola Robles, blind actress
Visibility and greater representation in the audiovisual field are two of the claims made by actress Lola Robles, with a visual disability, after her experience and journey in the world of the arts.
Robles discovered the existence of a theater group thirteen years ago and he liked it so much that he decided to study dramatic art at an academy. “I went with my guide dog and with my illusion knocking on the doors of different theater schools and they threw me out of three”, he declares.
But that rejection did not stop him from continuing in pursuit of his dream. She was finally accepted at the El Almadén school, run by Jordi David Catalonia, and there she was learning for three years. The actress would like the stereotypes around people with disabilities to collapse and more talk about, for example, the sexist violence suffered by women. In addition, more references are created, so that children with disabilities realize that they can also achieve the dreams they want.
Verónica Sánchez, rural entrepreneur
“Social and environmental sustainability and the rural world will be feminist or it will not be”. This is confirmed by the social educator and training anthropologist Verónica Sánchez, who founded, together with a group of friends, the Kikiricoop sustainable food cooperative with the aim of transforming the way of producing towards “greater sustainability and social justice”.
Within the cooperative they have opted to put life and care at the center, even if that means having less income. And they have introduced “the feminist perspective when it comes to integrating reproductive work into the work of the cooperative”, she explains.
One of the projects that stands out is “children’s shift”, which allows a person from the cooperative to take care of the minors in charge every day and for those hours to be quoted and charged as labor, the same as other tasks such as cooking or making invoices.
Costa Badía, artist with functional disabilities
Women with disabilities face double discrimination from a society that judges, rejects and makes them invisible. The artist and cultural mediator Costa Badía knows this well, and that is why she claims her functional disability and fights so that women with disabilities are given the place they deserve.
Badía, a graduate in Fine Arts, assures that women with disabilities are not seen as women. “People with disabilities are often talked about, but without differentiating gender and that is something that also seems complex to me. As far as I know there are no studies by gender. What studies do men with disabilities or women have? There are studies of people with disabilities in general, and, obviously, women with disabilities are affected by the fact of being a woman, but society seems to make us invisible”.
