Culture presents its Equality Plan with a special focus on the fight against sexist violence: “Everything will have a feminist perspective”

This Wednesday, the Ministry of Culture presented its Equality in Culture Plan 2024-2026. “Since the new team arrived, we were clear that we did not want the equality policy to be something marginal. “We wanted it to be a central axis of everything we do,” explained Minister Ernest Urtasun, who stated that he is “very clear” that equality “does not come by itself,” nor because of “natural inertia.” Nor do they trust “informality”, in that “there is no mechanism that leads to its improvement.” Hence they have decided to prepare this framework document, which covers more than one hundred pages, to achieve it.

The text is organized around four axes: equal opportunities, visibility and recognition, training and knowledge, and sexist violence. It includes 46 specific actions to achieve the objectives, such as the incorporation of the intersectional gender perspective in subsidies, scholarships and public procurement; the development of a guide to disseminate creators and artists in the secondary educational field and artistic and musical professional training; and the preparation of a report on the representation of migrant and racialized women in the cultural sector.

Until now, the only two equality initiatives launched by the Administration had been the Protocol for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment based on Sex and the Unit for the Attention and Prevention of Sexist Violence in the Audiovisual and Cultural Sector.

“Militancy” without specific budget

“We believe in a militant Ministry of Culture, in which within its policies, equality is part of a central axis,” added Urtasun. Of course, it has not been specified – neither in the presentation nor within the text, despite the fact that a page is dedicated to it – what budget is going to be allocated to comply with the Plan. “The necessary resources will be allocated for their development and execution,” is all the reference it includes.

Urtasun has highlighted that they are going to carry out “a diagnostic effort” to be able to have data based on which to take measures. He has also insisted on commitment to the fight against sexist violence: “We have to be very active.” And in the same way in the ability to influence “the economic gap that exists between men and women.” “We want everything done in the Ministry to be with a feminist, equality perspective. We do not present another sectoral plan, it has to permeate everything we do.”

Jazmín Beirak, General Director of Cultural Rights, has indicated that the document, which covers 100 pages, seeks to incorporate equality “in all dimensions of cultural participation, access, creation, decision-making, education, etc.” In turn, generate “material conditions that allow the participation of women in the cultural sector.” As he has defended, only in this way can we achieve “a more egalitarian society and build imaginaries thanks to its symbolic power, which must be supported by material conditions.”

Inés García Rubio, one of the authors of the Plan, explained during the presentation that, to carry it out, the first step was to contact all sectors to detect what are the “difficulties that women encounter in the culture”. From there they established a series of objectives, including a series of measures for each of them. Regarding sexist violence, the investigation has sought to “understand the situation, diagnose the incidence, what conditions favor cases to appear and raise awareness among cultural agents.” In addition to focusing on “prevention”: “We want there to be protocols that prevent cases and allow them to be detected.”