The table of the RAE academics

"If they don't make room for you at the table, bring a folding chair."

The most repeated quote when remembering Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first to stand as a candidate for the presidency of her country, could be applied to set off the occasional alarm at the photo of the plenary session of the Language Academy on March 2.

That was the controversial meeting that started the ideological battle that the tilde of the solo has become.

Beyond the debates and the fundamentalist positions derived from what was decided there, that family photo also kidnapped the attention of Twitter.

There were those who detected echoes of that oval table in the Plenary Hall with the war room of

.

Also who accepted the recurrent "disappointed, but not surprised" that is typed almost as a reflection in the face of the evident lack of women in the imaginary of the public sphere.

Because among so many gentlemen occupying space in the Academy, it was difficult to distinguish, in addition to Queen Letizia, three of the eight academics —Paloma Díaz-Mas, Carmen Iglesias, Soledad Puértolas, Inés Fernández-Ordóñez, Carme Riera, Aurora Egido, Clara Janés and Paz Battaner— who are part of the 42 members of the current corporation.

https://t.co/FO0sCY2Uah pic.twitter.com/vNU8nalMfx

— Iñaki Ortiz (@iortizgascon) March 2, 2023

out of ruin, sitting in a meeting

room in New York in 1975. It is one of his most impressive snapshots.

There, the heiress who did not tremble to take charge of one of the American media empires after the suicide of her husband, she symbolically stands out in her blue suede dress surrounded by twenty identical rich white men in suits.

Stunning to see this 1975 photo taken in NYC.

An image featured in the in the new book "The Only Woman" by Immy Humes, Washington Post publisher, Katharine Graham is the only non-white male sitting at the table.

Much more #diversity needed, but progress has been made.#Leadership pic.twitter.com/6G26zUwhj4

— Mark C. Crowley (@MarkCCrowley) August 17, 2022

This snapshot is part of

, the investigation and photobook of the documentalist Immy Humes that was published in Spanish by Phaidon in the summer.

A compilation of one hundred photographic portraits of male groups that include exactly that: a single woman.

It doesn't matter if the group is made up of doctors, police officers, artists, writers, athletes or engineers.

Nor if they are in the United States, Japan, Mexico or Iceland.

Not even if the photo in question was taken in 1920 or in 2020. If this documentary director who was nominated for an Oscar in 1991 has been able to detect something, it is that throughout all times, places and professions, the same thing always happens: there where a power game worthy of being portrayed is staged, gender inequality will also be evident.

I recognize that it was very important to deal with this issue of the tilde.

But in the RAE there is a minimal representation of women.

Although as the song says, who cares?

pic.twitter.com/i8aq3gP0Q0

– Angeles Villacastin (@A_Villacastin) March 10, 2023

It could be said that the RAE strictly complies with two of the four meanings that the Canadian writer Martine Delvaux has devised to define the "

”, an essay with the same name that has just been translated by Peninsula: “An organization that has traditionally excluded women and is under the control of men” and “a group of wealthy and elderly men who exercise political power ”.

Isn't this a club that women couldn't join until 1978, nearly 300 years after it was founded?

Are not these elderly gentlemen who continue to dictate how we should behave writing the rest?

We can always fantasize that the RAE would fall for a parity like the one now legislated by the Government with the Ibex companies.

In the absence of a designated chair, occupy that table with powerful folding chairs.

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