08/03/2022
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Por un mundo más feminista
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It has always conflicted me that some people congratulate me on Women's Day; it is not my birthday, it is not an achievement that I was born as a woman. Although I know that these congratulations are well-intentioned, I consider that this day should be destined to get deeper, What has been achieved in these years regarding the fight for women’s rights? What remains to be achieved? What is on our side to obtain more equality? How am I educating my children regarding gender equality?
As a mother of two girls, is a very special subject that completely reaches my heart. How to educate two future women to be independent and self-sufficient? How to strengthen their spirit knowing all the challenges that are going to be found for being women? And of course this raises my anxiety when I think about what the world is going to be like when they are adults, what opportunities they are going to have/lose because they are women, what harassment they might experience because they are women. Because we have to be realistic, today the gap in pay between men and women is 14.2%, and 1 in 6 women has experienced sexual assault or violence.
The numbers are shocking. For this reason, March 8 is a good opportunity to reflect on what is missing, but above all, on what we are doing. How little or how much we can contribute to lower these figures is important, but sometimes we are not sure what we can do from our side. That is why I share some tips on how to cooperate:
1) share the obligations of the house, at the end, couples live under the same roof and a lot of work is required for a house to be functional, all members of the family should cooperate, including children from the age of 5 years can pick up their toys. You will be impress how many clients keep coming to me who tell me their partners don't help them at all at home.
2)You can help to your daughters to look for feminist role models, there are more women to admire than just Disney princesses. This is challenging because it is what popular culture imposes on us. I’m so happy that the girls have more representation at the media than before, but still, we have a long way to go. One strategy that I give to my clients who want to empower their daughters from an early age is to evaluate and question the movies where the princesses are the classics from years ago, where they wait for the prince to rescue them and get married. Encouraging our daughters to question how the princess thinks, also motivates critical thinking that they will use for the rest of her life: why wasn't she saved her self? Why did she get married without knowing more the prince? What would you have done in her place? We are teaching them to question what they are seeing.
3)Never talk about another person's body with your children, although it is true that women are more affected by the stereotype of physical beauty, children can also be harmed. Help your children to love their body and respect the body of others, teach them to question what they see in the media, at the end it is true that many of those photos and videos they see in the cinema or on their tablets use some application to modify it. Physical beauty doesn't have to be the same for everyone, and it shouldn't be the same. Likewise, teaching them that no one has the right to touch them is part of this empowerment process, letting them know that they have the option of saying no or that they have the right to feel bad if someone touches them or wants to touch them, starts when they are little.
4)If you see any type of abuse or gender discrimination, speak up!. It is important that these actions are reported to the competent authority. And when you see this type of violence with a friend or family member, talk to her, tell her what you are seeing, tell her that it is something that worries you, do it in an empathic way, without causing her guilt (this is very important) and you are telling this because you care about her. A note aside , I am not referring to wanting to solve her life, the following actions will depend on her, what I mean by this is that we can’t not be in silence when we see abuse and violence happening.
5) Communication is key in terms of equality, and not only have good communication with our daughters, but with our sons as well. As long as our children share with us what they feel and what they are experiencing, we will be able to provide them with more tools to strengthen their personality, because at the end, life will represent challenges and our duty as parents is to prepare them to face them.
These are just some tips to be able to support the women and girls around you, The road to equality begins somewhere. We still have a long way to go, but I think everything is moving forward so that our daughters live in a world with equality.