"It is justice!", Pedro Sánchez has justified. The President of the Government wanted to celebrate Women's Day with what he has assured is an "impact" announcement. And he has advanced that the Council of Ministers next Tuesday will approve a law of equal representation between men and women in decision-making centers. "If women represent half of society, half of the political and economic power has to belong to women," he justified, during the PSOE rally that he staged in Madrid on the occasion of 8-M.
These will be the keys to the new law announced by the Chief Executive:
-Zipper lists: Men and women will be integrated into the electoral lists with a total alternation. Today, only 44% of the seats in Congress or 39% in the Senate are held by women.
- Parity governments. What today is an exercise of responsibility, which the socialists assure that they have always practiced in the last 20 years, will be a legal obligation. Whoever governs in Spain governs, this law will guarantee that parity no longer depends on the political sensitivity of whoever is in charge of the Executive. Parity will thus be mandatory in the Council of Ministers. The current Sánchez coalition executive already fully complies with it, with 60% of vice presidents and ministers.
-Parity in the boards of directors of large companies: 40% women will be mandatory in the direction of any listed company or public interest entity with more than 250 workers and 50 million annual turnover.
-Parity in professional associations: No governing board in these bodies without at least 40% women at the helm.
-Parity in public recognition juries: No prize or recognition financed with public money may be awarded by a jury that does not respect parity with at least 40% women at the helm.
"There will be people who find it serious and absolutely disproportionate, but to us it seems, simply and simply, to be fair," Sánchez defended, to loud applause. "By doing this, we are not only taking a step further and placing ourselves once again at the feminist vanguard in Europe as a whole, but we are taking a step in favor of the whole of Spanish society", she assured.
Sánchez has thus starred this Saturday, together with former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in an act before a thousand supporters in Madrid to vindicate the equality policies of the socialist governments, on the occasion of International Women's Day that is celebrated next Wednesday, March 8. Just the day after Congress votes to take into consideration the socialist reform of the controversial law that only yes is yes, to alleviate the unwanted effects of the application of this rule, after more than 700 sexual offenders have seen reduced their sentences after its entry into force, without an agreement with United We Can.
The head of the Executive has vindicated during his speech all the laws approved during this term in favor of women, despite the dissent with United We Can for the reform of the law on sexual freedom. "This coalition government has a policy agenda for progress and social justice that far exceeds any disagreement we may have on a specific case," he assured. "More things unite us than separate us," he insisted. And he has defended the quota policy, “which I know bothers the right a lot, because they confront the idea of meritocracy with quotas, as if before the photos full of men and without any women meant that there were only valid men and no women. as valid or more valid than those men”.
The president recalled that the PSOE first promoted the quotas within the party, and then in public action. "Of course, the quota system allows us to reduce and even overcome the historical inequality between men and women in terms of representation in private and public decision-making centers," he stressed.
The PSOE has mobilized its federal executive and other territorial leaders for this event, with the assistance of a broad representation of the government's socialist wing, with the ministers María Jesús Montero and Félix Bolaños, Isabel Rodríguez and Pilar Alegría, Reyes Maroto and Diana Morant, Miquel Iceta and Luis Planas. The act, presented by the Secretary of Equality of Ferraz, Andrea Fernández, has also had video interventions by former ministers, former socialist leaders and leaders of the feminist movement such as Matilde Fernández, Paca Sahuquillo, Leire Pajín, Bibiana Aído, Elena Valenciano or the Former Vice President Carmen Calvo. Zapatero's reference to the ex-ministers Carmen Alborch and Carme Chacón, always in the socialist memory, has also provoked great applause. The PSOE has thus wanted to wield feminist muscle in the face of 8-M, to try to shake off the internal fractures due to the law of only yes is yes or the trans law, as well as the clash with Podemos in the current coalition government.
