For what reason? The expert from the Women’s Health Association explains it.
Pilar Pascual, psychologist and coordinator of the NGO Mujeres para la Salud, offered an interview for the of Spain with the aim of exposing what women continue to need to advance, perhaps with greater steps, towards real and effective equality with men. These are some reflections
Gender discomforts are discomforts that women have for three reasons.
Firstly, because gender socialization in patriarchal societies, like ours, produces deficiencies, imposed by gender education, in our personality or in the way we see things.
Secondly, living in a society with gender inequalities or discrimination also has an effect on our health and, thirdly, living in a society that is permissive of violence against women, which means that all Women experience structural violence and this is also impacting our health.
How to change that discomfort?
The most important thing to change our culture and society, because this requires a comprehensive change in our society, is to start with education in schools.
When we say that we want to educate in equality, we propose coeducation as the most effective formula to work on this aspect. Sexual affective education is also important because we still realize how relationships between men and women continue to be unbalanced.
It is important that we act from childhood. The school is a good place to help families understand that family relationships also have to be equal, that there must be a distribution of tasks, in this co-responsibility that we are constantly asking for, that is really effective because we know that this is still the case. It is not like this. We know that families are a very important focus of education, so they must assume this responsibility.
Men and women caregivers
The objective of patriarchal gender education is to create dependent, submissive women so that they continue to carry out the task for which the patriarchy needs us, which is to care, so it is clear that we need people to take care of us, but what we are asking is that this care also be on the part of men.
All human beings serve to care and need to be cared for at different times in our lives. This is really the most important change that we must achieve in the near, immediate future, it is that distribution of care, understanding that because we are born a man or a woman we are not good for one thing or another, but that we are all equal and have to have the same responsibilities and the same possibilities of enjoying that care that we will also need in adulthood and childhood.
Women are in the family environment, but also doing jobs that no one wants, which are precisely related to that care, for example, women travel to other countries to work caring for the elderly or children. It is important that the caregiver takes care of himself or herself, but; Furthermore, change this dynamic of women being the only caregivers.
Psychological therapy focused on women
On many occasions, women throughout life, depending on the stage we are living, tend to have internal and external conflicts, such as, for example, when we try to achieve autonomy and we are young and we have doubts about whether we are well formed, whether we are to be able to live autonomously, or when we live with a partner and we have all those tasks that we are not willing to give up. In this case, we have to understand that for a woman living as a couple is a risk factor, while for a man it is a factor of well-being.
It depends on the moment in women’s lives that we need psychological care and it is not just any kind, it should be psychological care with a gender or feminist perspective because it is one that is aimed at the empowerment of that woman.
It is not about a woman resigning herself to having the life she has, but about changing those aspects of her life that are causing her discomfort. In women, it is often these expectations that society demands that we have to be like daughters, mothers, professionals, gender pressure for our own aesthetic body, among other external variables are what make us sick and need to be treated.
The Association of Women for Health is a space in which it has been possible to see how there is another way to learn to be women, to take care of oneself to be empowered and be owners of one’s lives, and the need to be willing to question and break with the bonds of patriarchy.