The woman is not the important thing

The world celebrated yesterday the day of the 'working woman', a holiday with repercussions in the vast majority of countries that is announced and experienced with great fanfare and jubilation because it is intended to highlight the value of the title with which the day has been baptised. To recognise the value of women who work, their full right to do so and the exclusion of taboos, exclusions or impositions that hinder such exercises and recognition.

I was not mistaken when I said and emphasised that this is celebrated in most countries in the world and for this purpose. Only backward countries, those subject to misunderstood and rigid religious customs, pressures and limitations do not celebrate it in this or any other way, nor do they allow demonstrations in support of such movements. Moreover, they are even persecuted and imprisoned, which can lead to very serious penalties or consequences, and even death itself. This is sadly not criticised with the necessary force and energy by any country or international organisation, which limits itself to self-congratulation and looking the other way in the face of such abuses, forgetfulness and aberrations.

But Spain, following its famous motto of 'being different', the celebration of 8M is taken from a very different perspective. In just four or five years we have managed to turn this celebration and demonstration of joy, which united many people in our streets - even at the risk of provoking the spread of the Covid pandemic, as it really happened - into a struggle, almost to the death, to define, each in their own way, what they understand by being a woman, their rights and their reason for being.

The shameful spectacle, full of insults and exclusions depending on the colour of the political party that joined or approached them, yesterday in the streets of Madrid and other capitals of Spain with parallel and different demonstrations passing through our streets, almost holding hands with each other; driven, in turn, by the two parties that form the government coalition and another 'independent' and contrary to the previous ones to demand true rights and definitions, with scandalous and very disparate figures depending on who provided the data of the count of attendees, is something that, of course, can only happen in Spain; a Cainite country and civil war unparalleled in the world.

Our government -which, to make matters worse, calls itself progressive- in terms of its real and effective policies, the legislation created and approved or in the process of being approved in Parliament, shows every day that it has shamefully forgotten about women, their real struggle and their true value, transforming them into beings who spend their days demanding parity by law in all important positions without the need to prove their worth, training and capacity, even in large companies.

Into something or someone who should only think and yearn to satisfy their sexuality in a self-indulgent way with masturbation instead of resorting to the normal and globally recognised sexual act between a man and herself, a woman.

In someone who must think about making love freely and without thinking about the consequences and derivations of her actions, for which abortion is freely, disproportionately and anachronistically facilitated, breaking all logic and the importance of the value of parental advice and permission; permission, which, however, is required for acts as simple as going on a school trip with the school.

Women, according to them, have lost the greatest treasure they possess exclusively and which no one and nothing can take away from them, motherhood. The most wonderful thing that can happen in this world, to become that being who accompanies, guides, advises and pampers us throughout our lives, even in our last breath, when most of us humans exhale an intimate memory and word of comfort in search of her redemptive shelter.

We no longer struggle to banish forever those strange situations in which women never got recognition for their work in housework, in supporting their partners in farm work, in mining or in the construction and maintenance of the family home.

Nobody remembers those women who have worked for years without being registered for social security, even when the company or business was run by their own spouse. Even today, we still hear news stories highlighting court rulings recognising workmen's compensation for work done outside the home, without compensation or taxation, to help them when they are on their own or in retirement due to old age.

Nor do we bear in mind that, for centuries and centuries, it has been women who have taken care of all the household and work chores to maintain their homes and the running of the country while their husbands have been away from home for years at a time to fight wars, nor that many of them have been forced to continue to do so because their partners, as a result of such wars, have never returned home or have been crippled and unable to work.

Women, that essential part of the family home, not only because of the role they play in the daily tasks of mother, housewife and the one who, with her work effort, contributes her bit to the family economy, is also not well weighted or recognised in that more than important role that involves accommodating to the husband's work in the case of being the main breadwinner; accommodation, which in many cases includes moving for years to a different place - far from friends and family - inside or outside of Spain.

We fail to remember that women have been demanding their labour and social rights for many, many years, regardless of race, religious conviction or political ideology. That the successes or important milestones achieved in their demands and struggles are shared between the left, the right and neutrals in very equal parts. This does not explain why it is surprising that it is now the left that takes up the banner of femininity and excludes and even expels, in a crude and repetitive manner, anyone who, being politically of a different political persuasion, wants to join a cause that should be totally transversal.

Among the many thanks and acknowledgements owed to women is the fact that for many years they have taken care of their parents or in-laws when they have reached the age of needing more than the usual amount of attention. For centuries they have had to combine their many tasks with such care and pampering; things which today, for various reasons, are becoming hard to find, even for those who have given many years to the care of others.

The world may be happy about these celebrations and festivities; many may feel identified with and grateful for the efforts and sacrifices made by a handful of women alone or accompanied by a few men who understood and applauded them throughout the world, mainly in the West. But what is not acceptable is to see what we have turned this day of rejoicing and healthy vindictive celebration into, mainly in those countries governed by retrograde people, pathetically opposed to equality between the sexes or by governments such as Spain's, which has turned the difference between the sexes into a battle for votes and a quest for prominence in the name of "Who gives the most"?

In these countries, and in some others even though they do not appear to be so, women are not what matters. They continue to be just another piece of marketing and auctioning to which many of them lend themselves in a very unreflective way because they do not understand that their true feelings and capacities are limited or curtailed with false promises and siren songs, and that they are led to demonstrate on television sets, at rallies, in the streets and squares in an unorthodox and unedifying way, turning them into wimps, who methodically embrace acts, gestures and deeds in which they believe they find their happiness, without realising that they are losing their true identity with them.

I would like to end this small work of thanks and vindication of women with a very special mention of those women, like mine, who, having given everything during their working, family, affective and giving life to others, due to physical or mental problems, now find themselves far from home, in professional and more specialised hands, which provide them with a simpler, more methodical and ordered life to which they are more than deserving, although unfortunately, not all of them receive the aid that governments give in these cases of extreme need. I understand that this is what we should fight for.