The introduction of the gender perspective in taxes and in the preparation of public budgets has been one of the issues addressed during the course of the CALRE Working Group Seminar on gender equality, in which it was explained, among other issues and approaches, how, through financial and tax law, one can promote gender equality and the total independence of women as the primary objective of any equality policy, also in tax matters.
The seminar, which took place at the headquarters of the Provincial Council of Cáceres, brought together representatives from different European regional parliaments and equality experts from different disciplines and fields, who met to address gender equality and also learn about the experience in this sense of parliaments with the aim of promoting it among their policies and operation.
Among the participating parliaments were the Parliament of Andalusia (which currently holds the presidency of CALRE), Parliament of the Canary Islands, Regional Assembly of Murcia, Corts Valencianas and Parliament of the Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation, in addition to the Assembly of Extremadura.
“Equality is an ethical statement regarding the idea we have of the world and human relationships. Equality between women and men is, neither more nor less, social justice between citizens, territories and rights in the face of individual options that a free society must promote. Today, when there is so much talk about the Constitution, I want to appeal to article 14, which talks about equality,” declared the president of the Extremaduran legislative chamber.
“It is necessary to emphasize that equality between people is a tangled fabric that must be untangled from numerous perspectives and approaches. For this reason, this Seminar has decided to enrich the search for equality with speakers of enormous prestige who offer us a concrete vision of the conflicts that reality presents, through also specific topics,” explained the president of the Assembly of Extremadura. .
The president of the Government of Extremadura participated in the inauguration, Guillermo Fernández Varawho acknowledged being “the son of a sexist and analogical society to whom life gave him the opportunity to be a feminist.”
“That parliaments meet to discuss ways to deepen gender equality is worth highlighting because a society that coexists with sexist violence cannot fall into complacency and as long as women continue to be murdered for being women, we cannot boast You are welcome, neither as a society nor as a people,” he said.
For her part, the president of the Provincial Council of Cáceres, Charo Cordero, He stressed that “real equality will never be achieved if institutions do not work to definitively close the so-called gender gap.” Furthermore, as president of an Institution that is responsible for municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants, Cordero has warned that “inequalities sometimes increase in the rural world due to an unwritten rule, imposed roles and traditions sometimes plagued by micro-machismo.” .
The presentations
The sessions were divided into several thematic blocks, the first of which was symbolic violence and micro-machismo in politics. This panel was led by the journalist and writer, Nuria Valerawho spoke about “Symbolic violence and political representation of women.”
Varela pointed out that the validity of patriarchy, understood as a system of structural domination, prevents politicians from doing their work under the same conditions as the men who carry out this same activity. “This loop is what causes them to still be subject to old assessments about their body and their appearance, about what they are and not about what they think or do, which makes it more difficult to consolidate their leadership and break glass ceilings,” he declared. he.
“If we want to consolidate our democracies we must end patriarchy and the inequality it causes,” said Varela, who highlighted the importance of paying attention in this framework to the use of symbolic violence and education.
Varela defined symbolic violence as a continuum of attitudes, gestures, behavioral patterns and beliefs whose conceptualization allows us to understand the existence of oppression or subordination of both gender and class or race. “Symbolic violence sustains abuse and perpetuates it,” he said.
In this context, he emphasized the relevance of the use of language, and the discourses that feed inequality in a subtle way. Thus, he pointed out the importance of separating grammatical gender from sex; He recalled that the masculine does not have the capacity to include the feminine and the importance of avoiding the use of the masculine as a generic. “Sexist language is exclusive,” he highlighted.
Next, within this same panel, the journalist from Diario.es and coordinator of the Micromachismo blog took the floor, Ana Requenawho explained that its objective is to contribute through a journalistic product to the denunciation that machismo is not exclusive to an area, a sector, an age or an environment, “but is transversal to the entire society and “That all women suffer from this behavior every day.”
To illustrate her presentation, Requena showed a video in which women in politics and other fields presented their sexist experiences, after which she pointed out several ideas such as that “women are socially punished for exercising authority, for exercising power, for appear ambitious. Her appearance, her physical appearance, is at the center of attention and comments: from her political rivals, from the media and even from her own colleagues.
“At Micromachismos we defend the right of all women to a life without machismo, regardless of their ideas,” declared Requena, who added that “all women have lived from a young age conditioned by these experiences, that we all have the right to tell and denounce it and that “This is an issue that must have public and political priority relevance.”
The Panel “Gender-sensitive Parliaments” was led by the Team Leader and senior expert in gender perspective of the European Equality Institute (EIGE), Barbara Limanowska, who presented various evaluation tools, whose purpose is to offer reliable data and reliable indicators on gender equality issues, as well as developing, collecting and processing communication methods in this area and generating codes of good practices.
These are tools that measure the degree of integration and involvement of parliamentary institutions in relation to equality, which allow a self-assessment for institutional transformation. Through them, equal opportunities to enter parliament are evaluated; the influence on labor procedures within said parliament; women’s interests and concerns within their parliamentary work agenda and whether legislation is gender sensitive.
The block of presentations was closed by the professor of Financial and Tax Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Extremadura, Elena Manzano who based his presentation on Taxation and Gender Equality and how, through financial and tax law, gender equality can be promoted. “On the one hand, there is the tax aspect and on the other, the budgetary aspect, but in both we can see that gender approach and try to promote that equality,” he explained.
For Manzano, personal income tax is the main tax in which important gender measures have been adopted, some of which he said he did not share. “There are measures that promote equality, but there are also laws that have the opposite effect.” In his opinion, all measures should be focused on maintaining or incorporating women into the labor market. “Through public resources and fiscal measures, the economic and financial independence of women must be promoted and made compatible with the reconciliation of family life.”
To this end, he highlighted the importance of public budgets being sensitive to gender “given that all items have an impact and nothing is neutral.” As objectives he indicated transversal incorporation in all areas of budget preparation; the recognition of the different needs, rights and obligations of women and men in society and the allocation of resources to programs specifically aimed at women. This would require, as she pointed out, the evaluation of the beneficiaries; the analysis of the incidence of public spending disaggregated by sex; gender-sensitive budget reports and the introduction of participatory instruments in budget preparation.