The Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, has drawn before the Equality Commission of the Congress of Deputies the main measures for this legislature.
The minister has highlighted the different equality policies such as survival policies, aimed at guaranteeing lives worth living for women and fighting against all forms of violence they suffer from being so; redistribution and equality policies, focused on the rethinking of economic and social relations in terms of both work and use of time and co-responsibility; and diversity care policies, which aim to combat any form of discrimination that affects people both because of their gender orientation, identity or expression, as well as their ethnic-racial origin.
Montero has valued the existence of a Ministry of Equality and affirmed that violence against women "constitutes one of the most serious, habitual and silenced human rights violations of those committed in our society." From 2003 to February 19, 2020, 1,044 women have been killed by their partners or former partners. Only so far this year, 11 women have been killed for this reason.
To fight against this violence, Irene Montero has announced that she will soon take to the Council of Ministers and Ministers the Draft Organic Law of Integral Guarantee of Sexual Freedom and, immediately, work will begin to have a Comprehensive Law against trafficking. The Law of Sexual Freedom, in Compliance with State Pact Against Gender Violence and the Istanbul Convention, establish comprehensive measures whose purpose is to prevent, detect, punish and eradicate sexual violence, while protecting and repairing victims. To provide assistance to victims, a network of specialized information and comprehensive assistance services will be implemented based on availability, accessibility and quality standards, including 24-hour crisis centers recommended by the Council of Europe.
In this way, for the first time in the Spanish legal system, a comprehensive regulatory framework will be given that will recognize as forms of sexist violence all the behaviors that imply the violation of the right to decide about sexual life, including violations of sexual freedom as aggressions sexual, sexual harassment, stalking, harassment, sexual extortion and pedophile deception. Also when they are carried out through information and communication technologies; as well as female genital mutilation, intentional infection of sexually transmitted diseases, forced marriage, treats it for reasons of sexual exploitation, as well as symbolic sexual violence.
Likewise, special attention will be given to victims of sexual exploitation, as it is "one of the most extreme forms of violence against women", and it will be a priority of the Sexual Freedom law to protect victims of sexual exploitation and "give them the rights that correspond to them ".
Educational subject and salary equality
In education, the Minister has announced a Plan to raise awareness and prevent all sexist violence with two central axes: to involve the educational environment at all stages and to address gender violence in digital environments. Furthermore, at the university level, the Ministry will promote, in alliance with that of Universities and from the Bureau of Gender and Universities, that feminist and gender studies be fully recognized as an area of knowledge.
On the other hand and in close collaboration with the Ministry of Labor, Minister Irene Montero has announced a series of urgent measures to guarantee equal treatment and opportunities between women and men in employment and occupation that, among other issues, will match progressively the permissions by birth, reception or adoption of minors, to equal workers and workers before the fact of forming their families. Thus, and again together with the Ministry of Labor, the enactment of a Law of joint responsibility will be carried out that consolidates the rights of workers in equality. Montero has also announced, as stated in the coalition agreement, that Spain will ratify ILO Convention 189 to extend the rights of domestic workers.
In turn, collecting the provisions of the Government Pact, and through the General Directorate of Sexual Diversity and LGTBI Rights, the Law for the Social Equality of LGTBI people will be processed for the regulation of the basic conditions that guarantee equality. Priority will also be given to the presentation of a Trans Law, which guarantees the anchoring of the fundamental rights and freedoms of trans people, who go through both self-determination and full depathologization.
At the international level for the Ministry of Equality, in coordination with the rest of the countries, it will be a priority to stop the reproductive exploitation of women, known as "rent bellies", with the conviction that women's bodies cannot be subject to of commodification, and that this is an inexcusable condition to talk about freedom and guarantee of human rights.
