Women in the European institutions
If I could put an image to frame this reflection it would be that of the Danish MEP Hanne Dahl in the European Parliament session with a baby in her arms, headphones to follow the debate and her hand raised to ask for the floor (27/03/2009). It was a story of great media impact and, in this case, highlights the difficulty that some working mothers experience when they have a baby. In that legislature only one in three members was a woman. The presence of women in the European Parliament had already increased due to the electoral provisions of each state, some of which, like Spain's, were reformed by the Equality Law passed in 2007.
This image portrayed - it is true, once again a picture is worth a thousand words - what it means to be a woman, the reason why it has taken us women so long, and we are still at it, to become equal to men as subjects of rights. It is not necessarily a question of considering men as a human model in the sense of trying to be like them, but in their position in relation to the social space.
The model was constructed, suspiciously similar in almost all narratives of the history of the human species, in a time when, synthetically told, while women were busy making sure that the human animal, the Aristotelian 'zoon politikón' did not disappear. They sought sustenance and claimed themselves as the prototype. A model that wanted to perpetuate itself and guarantee the domination of both spaces. Faced with the power of reproduction, exclusive to women, they would take advantage of this freedom, which in women was limited by the need for care that did not have to be permanent or exclusive, to take possession of the outside: the public. And in the private sphere, to reaffirm the non-exclusivity of offspring: mater sempre certa es, pater sempre incertus.
On the other hand, and despite the difficulty we have had in reaching parliaments as spaces of power, we have managed to break some formalisms that have also worked in favour of men. I am referring to the possible acceptance of telematic voting in parliamentary sessions. The assumption that gave rise to the approach was the possible birth of a female Member of Parliament that determined the absolute majority in the election of the Presidency of an Autonomous Community in which, curiously, it was not necessary to apply it. It was later included in the Parliamentary Rules of Procedure and extended to cases of paternity or serious illness. It was put into practice for the first time in the Corts Valencianes, on 16 December 2008, due to maternity leave, but it has been the COVID-19 pandemic that has shown the wisdom of its provision in all Parliaments.
Examples such as the one we have just described should help those who are reluctant to extend equality or any right to other human beings to recognise their blindness. It is, they are, a consequence of the dignity that accompanies the person. The Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the post-war Constitutions of Germany, Portugal and Italy, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and... a list that would be endless if we also include the judgments of the Court of Justice in which it is attributed... "to ensure that the fundamental right to human dignity and the integrity of the person is respected" (STJCCEE 9/10/2001).
It would be unfair not to recognise the progress that being European citizens has brought us women, starting with the principle of equal pay for equal work established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome, to the current equality action plan to put women's and girls' rights at the heart of global recovery for a world where gender equality is a reality, presented in November 2020.
To point out a recent flaw, but one that has also extended to documents adopted previously, I will give an account of the confusion between gender and sex, the latter word having disappeared due to the imperialism of the former. And the error is notable and probably due to a bad translation, as well as being inconsistent, since it was the European Union itself that disseminated what was explained at the Beijing Congress: sex, it is we women who give birth, gender, it is women who have the obligation to take care of.
The image of the European Union has changed: The composition of the Parliament in terms of gender representation has evolved in favour of equality and also in the highest representative positions: Ursula von der Leyen, first woman president of the European Commission (Dec. 2019); Cristina Lagarde (Nov. 2019), head of the European Central Bank; and Emily O'Reilly, European Ombudsman. This is the official power that did not prevent President Erdogan's Turkish protocol from ignoring her, leaving her standing in the room while he and European Council President Charles Michel sat in their chairs presiding over the meeting. When Michel was criticised for his attitude, he expressed "regret", claiming "not to create a political incident that would have wrecked months of work". The president's polite reaction also weighed on the meeting's remit, which included the Turkish government's position on the Istanbul Convention, a treaty to combat gender-based violence that had been presented in Istanbul in 2011. However, the meeting regrettably confirmed Turkey's withdrawal.
In the last elections to the European Parliament, held in 2019, women represented 39.4% of the total of the European Chamber, a figure that represented a record for the equality of men and women and which is a consequence of the regulations on equal representation in the decision-making places of the Member States. Among them the Spanish State, which modified the Organic Law on the General Electoral System by means of Organic Law 3/2007, of 22 March, for the effective equality of women and men.
It remains to be hoped that presence will also change the essence.
Julia Sevilla Merino, Honorary Lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia