SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 7th March (EUROPA PRESS) –
Astrid Pérez, the president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, kicked off the ‘Parliament and Equality’ event on Thursday to mark ‘International Women’s Day’.
In her address, she stated that “equality is a shared goal, not the sole privilege of anyone, and it demands the active involvement of the entire society.”
Therefore, she urged for “unity, free from bias, divisiveness, or discord when advocating for equality, freedom, and well-being for all women.”
“While it may seem that we live in a seemingly equal environment across many sectors of our society, the truth is that while we have made significant progress over the last century and a half, there is still much more to be done. We need to persist in our efforts to ensure genuine equality between men and women,” she affirmed.
Pérez highlighted that “many women face attacks, humiliation, invisibility, or encounter prejudices and discriminatory barriers in various realms, hindering their access to the same opportunities as men.”
She mentioned that in the Canary Islands, “we are regressing rather than progressing, as cases of gender-based violence increased by 16% in 2023.”
The president of the Canarian Parliament also called for remembrance and solidarity towards all women experiencing abuse and violence during these times, inflicted by those who seek to deny them the freedom to live.
Following her speech, Astrid Pérez officially changed the names of two chambers within the Parliament that previously had exclusive titles.
The Chamber of Presidents is now known as the Chamber of Presidents, and the Chamber of Deputies, which had overlooked the presence of women within the chamber, has been renamed as the new Chamber 8 Islands.
Margarita Álvarez Pérez de Zabalza, the founder and president of the Coca Cola Institute of Happiness and the driving force behind the Observatory of Innovation in Employment and Education, then delivered a speech on equality and happiness. She recounted some of her encounters and “reality checks” regarding machismo in Spain and other nations.
During her presentation, she expressed her dismay that we still inhabit a society where half of the population remains underrepresented. “It is not just, and above all, it is highly unwise,” she remarked.
Yasmina Newport Perdomo, the CEO of the Newport Group, shared her insights on the presence of women in leadership roles and reminded the audience that “it has only been 46 years since a woman could independently open a bank account in Spain”, without facing gender discrimination.
Over recent decades, entrepreneurial activity has surged in Spain and, post the pandemic years, “the rate of entrepreneurship between men and women has levelled out, thanks to the rise in female entrepreneurship, surpassing that of men in the Canary Islands in 2019 and 2022,” she stated.
Nonetheless, Yasmina Newport lamented that “75% of Spanish enterprises do not have any women on their management boards” or that “only three out of every ten CEOs in Spain are women.”
