While the campaign of the first viable woman candidate for the presidency has made it painfully obvious that misogyny rules in America, other nations are making serious strides toward gender equality. Pictured here is Carme Chacón -- the first woman to head Spain's armed forces. Your eyes do not deceive you, Spain's Minister of Defense is inspecting the troops while she is 7 months pregnant. And she was already 7 months pregnant when she was appointed to the job by Spain's Prime Minister, a self-identified feminist!
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has also appointed a majority female cabinet. In another hundred years or so, maybe America will be ready to emulate Spain's feminist agenda. Or maybe not. We can't even get our media to treat the nation's first serious woman presidential candidate with respect, never mind gender equality.
By now, no one should be surprised by Zapatero's commitment to gender equality. In his first term, he passed a sweeping law against domestic violence, legalized gay marriage, eased divorce laws, and required political parties to practice gender parity. He also appointed equal numbers of men and women to cabinet positions, and named María Teresa Fernández de la Vega as his deputy prime minister.
This time around, the prime minister, who was re-elected on March 9, appointed more women than men to his cabinet. He also created a new Equality Ministry, charged with ensuring fairness in the workplace and continuing the fight against domestic violence. "For the Socialists, gender equality has become a sign of identity," says Maribel Montaño, secretary for equality during the previous administration.
But for all the preparation, the sight of Chacón inspecting troops on her first day in office, with her rounded belly covered in a stylish maternity blouse, came as a jolt. After walking firmly past a line of erect soldiers in their dress uniforms, the minister gave a brief, adulatory speech, then led the troops in a rousing cheer of "Viva España!"
For Spanish feminists, the small shock of that moment is exactly the point. "It's an important image precisely because it conveys normality," says Marisa Sotelo, president of the Madrid' based Women's Foundation. "It serves a pedagogic function: it shows that women can be and are everywhere."
British Envy of Spain's Feminist Agenda
If Spain, the father of machismo, can throw off centuries of tradition by having a Prime Minister who declares himself a feminist appointing a seven-months pregnant woman as Defence Secretary, then surely the British political classes should be feeling a little abashed. Increasing women's participation in politics isn't a matter of political correctness, as some of the crustier Conservatives would have it. It is a basic tenet of representative democracy that a parliament should at least roughly represent the people who elect it.
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