Women from
every walk of life joined the celebrations to m ark International Women’s Day
in Calasparra on March 8.
At a mass demonstration at midday in the Plaza de la Corredera, called by the
local Department of Equality, the women’s manifesto demanded: equality,
visibility, equal opportunities, fair treatment, the sharing of household tasks;
and a level playing field to permit
women to realise their full potential with the same opportunities and conditions as their male
counterparts.
The feminist movement in Calasparra turned the streets purple again to demand
equality between men and women and to denounce cases of exclusion, unstable working
conditions, lower salaries and violence, which half of the female population
suffer.
The Head of the local Equality Department, Mari Carmen López Alba, after making
a special Women’s Day broadcast on Radio Calasparra, was the first to address
the demonstration.
Then 10 year old Adriana Martínez Gomáriz, representing the future, read the manifesto.
The suffragettes, pioneering women who fought for women’s right to vote, were
represented, and distributed flowers and poems, in homage to the women who
suffered persecution and torture for the cause.
Although women in the UK won the right to vote in 1918, women in Spain had to
wait until 1933.
In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognised women’s right to
vote as a universal human right.
