Trump points to new human groups that must be annihilated every day, and he is no longer content, as in his first term, with bluffing and naming the biblical plagues that will fall upon them, but is now ready to unleash hell upon us. We have known many bluffs throughout history, it is not an innovation, but we simply did not expect that this could happen now. Suddenly, we see that this is not the case, that everything can go backwards or collapse, that, in a word, everything can get worse, as has happened other times in history.
Threats lead us to a question: are we capable of reacting? How do we pose the question? Josep Ramoneda in his book Power and freedomWhat makes so many people obey the U when it exercises power in a way that is contrary to common interests? Is it fear, apathy, fascination? There is only one way out: to form groups powerful enough to mount a serious opposition. Individual resistance is of little use.
Here is one of the measures that you have announced these days: the prohibition of US institutions from hiring companies that have adopted policies in favour of equality and diversity. Yes, we have already understood: the world can only belong to big men like you, and women must be returned to their homes, along with gays and all the groups that, with so much effort, have been achieving a certain normality in our country. Because it is no longer just a matter of making the law in your country, but in the entire world.
Policies relating to equality and diversity, and above all those based on the idea that positive discrimination is necessary to balance access to positions of power by certain groups that have been excluded for millennia, have taken many years and many efforts to make even the slightest progress. Thirty years ago, we started the first corporate programme for equality at the Women's Institute, which later became a legal requirement for equality plans in companies with more than 50 employees, both in Spain (see Royal Decree-Law 6/2019, of 1 March) and in the European Union. We have made significant progress, but not to the point of achieving equality: all the data still show us the imbalance between men and women in senior positions in large companies and corporations. A slow path, but one that until now seemed safe. So safe that many women have even forgotten that, without the previous struggles, they would not be where they are, just as our mothers were not, despite all their merits and abilities.
Will they obey the companies and renounce their egalitarian policies? Possibly yes, at least many of them, since business is business, and some have accepted these policies without much enthusiasm. Now, what opposition can we exert? We only have one, the same one that is used against us today: the market, the only interest that apparently prevails now. Women are buyers, we contract services with companies, we choose between different brands. If a company renounces its equality and diversity policies, or stops exercising them, I renounce its products. Let it not count on me as a client, I do not count on it as a producer of goods or services. Let us unsubscribe from all companies that declare that they have renounced these policies, let us stop buying their devices, their clothes, their products of all kinds. We will see how long it takes them to reconsider.
You will tell me that it is not easy to know if a company has abandoned its equality and diversity policies, that they will do so quietly, that they will simply stop applying them. In principle they cannot do so, since it is a legal requirement. But if we have to wait for the judicial system to react, women's positions will have already gone back many points; on the other hand, who will report it? We need to carry out an information task, be on the lookout and make lists of companies that are not equal or that are no longer equal. A training for another action that may also be necessary to carry out: make lists of products from the United States or companies from that country in order to stop using their products and services. Difficult, I know, they sneak into our computers, mobile phones, everywhere. That is why it is necessary for Europe to wake up and create its own IT services, because it is time to reverse globalization, which has become an abuse and an imposition.
We need to learn to resist and fight back. We don't like it, no; we aspire to another kind of world, women. But if we are forced, we need to know how to respond, or we will return to the starting positions.
