The Ministry of Culture presented this Wednesday, with which it aims, among several objectives, to reduce the wage gap and sexist violence against women who work in any cultural sector. “We believe in a militant ministry for equality,” said Ernest Urtasun, head of the portfolio, “we want everything we do to be done with feminist glasses, with equality glasses, for it to be a central axis.”
Over the next two years, Culture, in collaboration with the associations that are part of it and more than twenty external experts, will develop 46 actions related to equal opportunities, visibility and recognition, training and knowledge, and prevention of sexist violence. This project does not have a global budget, 25 of these measures (17 of them with resources from the ministry itself) do have an economic item. Sources from the Ministry assure this newspaper that it will be finalized when the General State Budgets are approved; Furthermore, it will be at the time when the projects are developed that it will be decided whether the economic part comes from Culture or from the ministry in collaboration with the rest of the organizations involved.
Irene García, head of , a feminist association that has collaborated first in collecting information, to then “be able to identify the problems and obstacles that women face and from there establish objectives and measures”, has detailed the work that is intended do in each of the four areas covered by the Equality Plan. “We must have the same opportunities because studies show that we are the great consumers of culture, but when analyzed from the point of view of cultural creation, there is great precariousness and employment gap,” García explained.
Also in the room was Gisela Vaquero, a video game designer, representative of a sector that is especially vulnerable when it comes to female developers’ access to the labor market. The expert has detailed that women already make up half of those who play (a fact that she supports, but that they continue to receive “a lot of harassment.”
A similar situation exists. Elisa McCausland, a specialist in feminism and comics, recalled that “there is a lot of work to be done in feminist genealogy” and has advocated for protecting “the graphic heritage” and alleviating “the lack of recognition of female authors.”
Culture aims to provide greater visibility to women in the sector by trying to eliminate “the androcentric gaze,” in García’s words, and adding an intersectional perspective that takes into account all the discrimination that women suffer, not only gender, but also because of their administrative situation, their origins, their skin color… Alejandra Ntutumu, president of , of Guinean origin, has demanded that “the academic curriculum and public libraries include more books that tell the stories of racialized people. Representation in the self-esteem of children is of great importance. “The power of stories lies in the art of possibility.”
At the moment, the ministry has only specified two of the measures in this plan. On the one hand, the sexual harassment prevention protocol. On the other hand, last October it began operating in the Audiovisual and Cultural Sector, with an initial budget of 30,000 euros that will be expanded to 60,000 from 2025. This new entity offers first psychological and legal care for women who have suffered some type of sexist violence in the cultural sector anywhere in Spain. The Aspacia Foundation is in charge of handling cases confidentially and free of charge and without the need for a prior judicial complaint.
The president of the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media (CIMA), Guadalupe Balaguer, has stressed that this is one of the scourges that must be addressed with the greatest urgency: “In the audiovisual and cultural sector there is a great need to respond to all cases, the care unit is essential, also having protocols that inform and allow us to accompany.”
“We intend to achieve equity through culture, which will allow us to work in a more egalitarian society,” summarized Jazmín Beirak, general director of Cultural Rights, who when asked about more specific measures such as how public subsidies are going to be changed. According to criteria of equality and intersectionality, he has limited himself to answering that this, like other initiatives, “will be studied.”
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