Women's Protest Day

Thursday March 8th is International Woman’s Day. This year, it is also ‘La Huelga 8-M’: the first major Women’s protest across Spain. This strike has been called to show the inequality of women in Spain (despite notable advances in the last few years). Women are paid less for the same job (in some cases) and have higher unemployment; they work longer hours with lower-paid jobs, with further duties waiting for them at home; they suffer from insult, machismo, definition and language-use. They are preyed upon and sometimes beaten or even killed by their partners.

All of these things make today’s demonstrations an issue of respect. Perhaps the men-folk could even join them.

Not that all of us are sympathetic – like the Bishop of San Sebastian who thinks the Devil has entered into the ‘dignity of las mujeres’. He evidently doesn’t agree that ‘women’s bodies are their own’.

Such a mass uprising can only be political – with Podemos hugely in favour (here), the PSOE playing coy and the Partido Popular limiting itself to a muted ‘the best way forward is to keep working towards equality’. Ciudadanos says it doesn’t support ‘the anti-capitalist women’s strike’.

Yet here we have Ana Pastor, the PP president of the National Congress: ‘It’s to do with women, not with politics. All women in Spain, whatever their ideology, know that this is a macho society...’.

We say, today is the end of silence. Good Luck, Ladies – make your protest!