Waiting for the eradication of violence against women and girls: Marcela Lagarde

Number: 440

• She leads a conference “Women’s political rights from a feminist perspective” in the INE auditorium
• The struggle of feminism is also a struggle for democracy: Lorenzo Cordova
• The full exercise of the rights of citizenship must take place in freedom and in peace: Norma De la Cruz
• Without women there is no democracy: Adriana Favela

Sixty-nine years after the recognition of women’s right to vote and despite the progress made in terms of parity where they occupy the policy-making space, equality in democracy and the eradication of political violence against women have not been achieved. women and violence against girls, complained feminist Marcela Lagarde.

At the headquarters of the National Electoral Institute (INE), she delivered the conference “Women’s political rights from a feminist perspective”, where she argued that the main requirement for progress in eliminating violence is not to perceive it as an isolated event.

“How do we pretend that women don’t experience violence in a country that has this brutal level of violence, with men, with women, with girls,” she asked.

Before the councilors Norma De la Cruz Magaña and Adriana Favela Herrera, the presidential adviser of the INE, Lorenzo Cordova, students, legislators and representatives of the local public electoral bodies, made a journey from the right to vote, where as a resistance movement to the killing and imprisonment of young students in In Mexico and around the world, women annulled their first vote with the legend “October 2 is not forgotten”.

In his conference, the ethnologist and professor of anthropology lamented the acts of violence not only against women but also against men, “we are a country of massacres, we are a country of monuments, because we have memories and we don’t want them to be forgotten, that’s why we voted on October 2, they don’t forget, the 43rd don’t forget and 17 or 15 from Totolapan, Guerrero, don’t forget”.

However, he also insisted that he did not want to have “violence masquerading as work to eradicate violence”.

“Violence against women and girls requires structural treatment, this violence is not alien, it is constitutive and to achieve its eradication we must have politics and rights. Thanks to the fact that the voice of women was recognized 69 years ago, we mark this wonderful anniversary for the life and freedom of women and girls and for all children and youth, men and women, the right to live in peace,” he said.

In this sense, he made it clear that the killing of women is a state crime “because it is linked to the reproduction of violence and to the reproduction of inequalities.”

Lagarde noted the Common Law on Women’s Access to Lives Free of Violence as establishing the right to criminalize this political violence “allows us to prevent, identify, counter and democratically oppose this violence,” she said.

The struggle of feminism is also a struggle for democracy

Immediately, the presidential adviser Lorenzo Cordova Vianello established that “the struggle for democracy is also the struggle for feminism, and the struggle for feminism is also the struggle for democracy”, so the feminist program is the defense of democracy against the winds of regression that are in the world.

The 69th anniversary of the vote, he added, is a day to celebrate progress but also to raise the challenges, of which he mentioned three such as the lack of parity at the municipal level, the political violence that continues to hang over and this , that “Democracy is either feminist or it is not a democracy.

depatriarchalizing politics

The President of the INE Commission on Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination, Norma De la Cruz Magaña, emphasized the importance of continued progress and transformation so that the full exercise of citizenship rights occurs in freedom and peace.

He agreed with Lagarde in changing patterns of social, structural behavior that allow mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion to continue to reproduce, “depatriarchalize politics not only in voting but also in exercising office.”

Without women there is no democracy

“Without women, there is no democracy,” added councilor Adriana Favela Herrera, who reiterated that women cannot be left out of the decision-making process and for this assured them that they have the INE, “as a union institution to guarantee the exercise of our political rights.

He emphasized that although parity is a reality in the federal and local Congress, “it is one thing what the principles are in the law, it is another that they become a reality”, for which he highlighted the work done by the INE, Local Public Electoral Authorities and electoral tribunals so that women hold office in popular elections.

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