Once again, on the 8th of March, 2022, we commemorate International Women’s Day to pay tribute to the movements for women’s rights and to continue to raise awareness of gender inequality. This call goes beyond this day and permeates the 365 days of the year and every one of us who makes up our society.

Esquerra Republicana and our youth wing Jovent Republicà labour each and every day to ensure that women’s rights are observed and fully enforced in all settings. We understand this struggle for women’s rights—for human rights—from an intersectional perspective, fully aware that people are constituted and influenced by myriad axes of inequality and social categorization that traverse lives, bodies and experiences.

In the last two years, we have seen how the feminized jobs with least economic and social acknowledgement have been precisely the essential jobs that have had to keep going. It is clear that since the beginning of the pandemic, the vulnerabilities suffered by women have been aggravated. On top of that, a recent government report reveals that the wage gap between men and women stands at 22.2% in Catalonia, while in Valencia, the Balearic Isles and Northern Catalonia it stands at 21.6%, 15.9% and 13%, respectively. This means that women earn on average between €3,000 and €7,000 a year less than men; they have poorer salaries at all levels of education; only 10% of women have access to management positions; and they suffer from greater job insecurity, which translates as feminization of poverty and an assault on their economic and personal independence. We believe that this is a fundamental issue to which we must address our political action.

Esquerra Republicana and Jovent Republicà strive to foster co-responsibility between women and men, and in the public administrations. We advocate that time and work must be equitably distributed with gender equality in mind and that there should be real co-responsibility between women and men in the tasks associated with reproductive duties. At the Ministry of Feminisms and Equality, we pursue policies that reconcile work alongside personal and family life to ensure that women have the right to enjoy leisure and participation on an equal footing with men. It is also important to reconsider both maternity and paternity leave, opting for equal, non-transferable leave to encourage co-responsibility so that women are not penalized professionally when exercising their leave. In addition, we will continue to work on implementing more rational schedules in our country to satisfy social and personal needs and to consolidate time as a right, to ensure freedom, equity and well-being.

We will continue to press for the right of women to decide on their own bodies and the right to unencumbered, safe motherhood. We thus support the free and fair exercise of all rights, advocating free, legal and safe abortion. We call for decriminalization worldwide.

We will continue to denounce and combat violence suffered by women. This regards gender-based violences in the plural, because sexual violence, economic violence, symbolic violence, institutional violence, vicarious violence and all those forms of discrimination suffered by women for the simple fact of being women are also sexist violence.

Esquerra Republicana and Jovent Republicà’s commitment to gender equality is echoed in our internal Plan for Equality, which guides us in our endeavour to achieve full political participation for women. We also lead feminist transformation through government policy, and in addition, we undertake to adopt alternate female-male “zip list” candidate quotas throughout the territory for municipal elections. We did this in 2019 in almost every municipality with over 3,000 inhabitants where we presented candidates. The challenge for the next municipal elections is to present zip-lists in municipalities with over 2,000 inhabitants. We will thence continue with further steps to improve the presence of women in Catalan institutions at all levels. Because equality is not only to be preached but also practised, with commitment, ambition and responsibility.

We call for mobilization for women’s rights, today and every day of the year, to continue contributing to a more just and egalitarian society that will make the Catalan Republic a Feminist Republic of free women and men.

Women Have Every Right!

8th of March, 2022