The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that the Council of Ministers will be discussing and voting on a new Parity Law of equal representation.
“If women represent half of society, half of political power and half of economic power”, women have to be half in decision-making bodies, said Sánchez.
“There will be people who find it serious and even absolutely disproportionate, but to us it seems simply and plainly fair,” he continued.
With the attendees standing by the announcement, the president explained that, by approving this law, “we are not just taking a step further and putting ourselves at the forefront of feminism in Europe. It is one more step for Spanish society as a whole “.
And he assured that the International Monetary Fund itself has calculated that if the entire female population participated in the country’s economy, the GDP would rise by 20%. “To favour feminist policies is to benefit the whole of society.”
The new Law includes such elements as parity in the Council of Ministers, in the boards of directors of large companies, governing boards in professional associations, and parity in public recognition juries.
And he recalled that it is within the PSOE where the debates are first opened and the policies that later lead to advances in rights and freedoms of Spanish society are put into practice.
In short, the Government’s feminist policies “benefit everyone”: Raising the SMI, revaluing pensions, investing in dependency “are feminist measures because they are the best lever to guarantee equality between men and women,” he stressed.
And he has assured that “this coalition government has a project of progress and social policy, it has an agenda that far exceeds any discrepancy that we may have on a specific case. More things unite us than separate us”, he stated.
But there is still a long way to go to reverse all the cuts and backsliding that were set in motion by the neoliberal policies of the right. “And we are not going to reverse that in 4 years. We need a decade of progress to strengthen everything that the right has weakened.” “That is why we need the governments of the people from 28M” and he has been proud to belong to a “brave” organisation like the PSOE, which, despite the pandemic or the war in Ukraine” “We apply ourselves with greater intensity to advance rights and freedoms”.
