No More Glass Ceiling
Spain, you might believe, is the land of the machismo in which the role of women is still to spend time in the kitchen and the home and little else besides. This would be quite wrong. Among the transformations of recent times, especially under the current Socialist administration, has been the elevation of women to top governmental posts. Spain, branded with the Mediterranean "Nordic" tag, is right up there in terms of gender equality when it comes to public life. The country compares well with Finland, Norway and Sweden when it comes to both cabinet and parliamentary female representation. For all the attempts and the all spin in the UK, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and Germany are well in advance in having promoted women to cabinet office.
A question is, why Spain? Fundamental perhaps is that the country's president is a "feminist", even if this self-styled description by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero does sound a bit odd. The country's conservatism, in terms of social attitudes, has been turned on its head, and in a remarkably short period. It is one reason why the opposition Partido Popular remains in opposition; it does not project itself in a way that chimes with the social change that Spain has undergone and is undergoing. Zapatero may yet be judged as one of the more important figures in the country's history for precisely these changes in attitude.
At the local level, there is a similarly high representation of women in public life. The Partido Popular in Majorca and the Balearics, to its credit, is headed by a woman; Majorca's council and the Balearic parliament are both headed by women, one of whom was formerly the leader of the Mallorcan nationalists.
"The Sunday Times" (20 April) reported in depth on the representation of women in governments across Europe. It had a revealing graphic. Of the countries of the EU, the UK was ahead of only four other countries in terms of percentage representation in lower houses of parliament, and two of those (Italy and France) seem to have got the message as well. Margaret Thatcher may have broken the mould of male-dominated politics in the UK, but she certainly doesn't seem to have left a legacy that has gone on to further challenge this.
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