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Newsletter Americanas: The government that excites women in Chile

2022-01-23T19:14:52.336Z


Gabriel Boric has appointed this week a Cabinet with a majority of female ministers. And, in Brazil, a death and conviction of two public figures reveals the burden women continue to carry.


This is the web version of Americanas, the newsletter of EL PAÍS América in which it deals with news and ideas with a gender perspective.

If you want to subscribe, you can do so at this link.

In this installment of Americanas, Rocío Montes writes to us from Santiago about the illusion of women in Chile, where the president-elect Gabriel Boric has just appointed a Cabinet with a majority of female ministers, and Naiara Galarraga Gortázar tells us from Brazil two pieces of news, that of a farewell to a samba legend and silence in the face of a soccer player's conviction for rape, which say a lot about how this society treats women.

A Cabinet with 14 female ministers, by Rocío Montes

The one who will be president of Chile since March, Gabriel Boric, announced his Cabinet this Friday.

But although parity was expected, along the same lines as the convention in charge of drafting a new Constitution, he made an unprecedented political decision in Chile and in much of the world: he appointed 14 women from a team of 24. It will be the country's first Cabinet with a majority of women and with one of them, the doctor Izkia Siches, she will debut as Prime Minister of the Interior, the most relevant position.

The gesture has not been gratuitous: it represents a kind of return of hands to the women who have promoted the changes since the non-violent mobilization.

Gabriel Boric and Izkia Siches on Friday during her appointment as Interior Minister. STRINGER (REUTERS)

In May 2018, the young women were the spearhead of a new feminist wave, anticipating the October 2019 protests that gave rise to the constitutional process to draft a new Constitution. In a relatively small country where Latesis emerged – the authors of the world-famous

A rapist on his path

– it was women who gave Boric victory in the presidential second round on December 19. It happened after another woman, Izkia Siches, mother of a girl under a year old –

baby

Khala – traveled half of Chile with her in her arms to campaign and prevent the victory of the ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast.

A government with a majority of female ministers is an important step forward, but the agenda to try to advance women's rights faces multiple and profound challenges: from the cultural machismo impregnated throughout Chilean society to issues such as work-life balance for mothers and low wages compared to men. In Chile, as in the rest of the region, inequities are observed on all fronts. The new Minister for Women, Antonia Orellana, a 32-year-old journalist specializing in gender who has worked in organizations against sexist violence, will not be alone. A good part of the female ministers who will arrive in Boric's Cabinet in March have a strong feminist stamp, which should translate into a country where girls – as is already the case,little by little– continue to grow with the certainty that nothing can stop them because they are women.

From the clamor for Elza Soares to the silence for Robinho, for Naiara Galarraga

Singer-songwriter Elza Soares in a file photo in Rio de Janeiro.Ricardo Moraes (REUTERS)

The farewell that Brazil gave to the samba legend Elza Soares, who died at the age of 91, brought her feminist side to the fore. An activism that he did not seek, he would undoubtedly have preferred to grow up with a placid life. But those things did not happen to black women of her time. A life of poverty, violence and tragedies made her an active defender of women's rights, equality, and the fight against gender violence or racism. Married at 13, she saw four of her eight children die. But in her last years she was able to enjoy well-deserved tributes, becoming a powerful symbol of feminine self-affirmation that her country has dismissed as a true goddess. A clamor that contrasts with the silence before the most likely outcome of the other big news of the week in Brazil.The soccer player Robinho has exhausted the resources, he should serve nine years in prison for raping a woman in Italy, but everything indicates that he will not serve the sentence thanks to the fact that the Brazilian Constitution prevents the extradition of its citizens. The footballer is one step away from going unpunished but no one among his compatriots has raised his voice much.

These are our recommended articles of the week:

And to say goodbye, some suggestions:

➡️ A woman:

Antonia Orellana.

The newly appointed Minister for Women and Gender Equity in Chile has been one of the champions in defense of the right to decide in the South American country.

Orellana is a journalist and, at 32, she is the youngest minister in Gabriel Boric's Cabinet.

She has been part of the Chilean Network against Violence against Women between 2015 and 2020 and was an advisor on gender issues in the campaign of the president-elect.

💻

One platform:

The womenreferents.com database, which houses the names of more than 200 Venezuelan women experts in various disciplines, from different political currents and without distinction of age.

"We seek to solve the lack of gender diversity in the spokesperson and authorized sources in journalistic content," its creators point out in the presentation of the platform, who encourage the media to open more spaces for the voices of women and people not binary.

“There are no more excuses!” they say and invite us to add more names to this list that shows that if we don't see more women in the media it's not because there aren't any, it's because we don't look for them.

🎧

A podcast:

Naked psychology. The first recommendation will always be to treat mental health with specialists, but it is not always possible. Especially in regions such as Latin America, where accessing therapy through the public health system is not so easy and paying for treatment privately seems to be a privilege for a few. This podcast talks about anxiety, attachment, mourning and depression, among many other topics, under the leadership of the clinical psychologist Marina Mammoliti, an Argentine professional who also leads a group of women therapists that offers online services and free material on health mental. A virtual library of more than 200 texts on psychology and well-being can be accessed free of charge on its digital platform.

If you want to receive every Sunday Americanas, the feminist

newsletter

of EL PAÍS America, you can sign up here.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-23

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