PES Manifesto

Natalia Reyes: The colour of politics

Published Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 13:52
by eromerof in European democracy & diversity (211 views and 1 comments)

After an election, the democratic process goes on with the set up of a government, which then defines a project for the future, and more concretely appoints its ministers. If the present Spanish government can be called ‘pink’ because it has 9 women and 8 men, as Berlusconi recently pointed out (see The Times and The Independent), then the rest of EU governments could be called ‘blue’. In this respect, there are no differences between the developed countries of the Western World and developing countries, whatever their ideologies and history. For instance, the presence European Commission has only 9 women out of the 27 commissioners. The colour ‘blue’ therefore seems to be a common trait that no-one should boast about.

But all this would be just another subjective comment if women were not constantly forced to prove themselves and if they were not there merely out of a simple strategy of political marketing. In addition, women must also prove their worth and show that they are not just puppets. In our society, in most cases, women must adjust to the requirements of a patriarchal society, which allows them to join but never cast a shadow over their male counterparts, who ask them to be mothers and not forget to take care of their children (for who else would do it if not them?).

Colours are important in politics: the red Left gets quite a few backs up amongst those advocates of bluer conservative values. Nowadays promoting equality policies, which put women at their core, is pejoratively called ‘pink’ politics. However, we are talking about a social change that is affecting the major structures of political power. In defining socialist policies, we have a moral obligation to work in favour of this profound social change through education, legislation and the questioning of those social models based on the so-called superiority of one sex over the other. Today, Spain has a Ministry of Equality aiming to define policies in order to penalize male-chauvinistic violence, make women more visible in certain academic fields and areas (such as History, Applied Sciences and technologies) and work towards true equality in the labour market.

I believe that this brave decision to put emphasis on equality policies should be one of the cornerstones of the political action of the Party of European Socialists.

Find a Spanish-language version of this post here.

Natalia Reyes is a pedagogue, a PSOE activist and a member of the manifiesto2009.es network.

Tags: activists, blogger of the week, equality, political parties, women