Our own feminist agenda

My mom says that since I was a little girl I’ve always been a fighter; that she would normally hear my little voice everywhere we went protesting against the people I saw committing an act of injustice. The truth is back then I didn’t even knew the definition of words like human rights, equality, or respect, but I did knew that abusing our power in order to obtain what we want or to impose our will on others, is just wrong. I could defend justice with such courage and braveness, because when I was little I wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody and that gave me the freedom to speak loud and clear about what I thought.

Today, 20 years later I still think that the abuse of power as a means of control and manipulation is one of the worst vices of mankind. Proof of that is that the inequalities and injustices I saw happening around me when I was a little girl have not diminished, but sadly have increased instead, both in number and form, between people and between countries. This is why many of us have been studying and working in order to empower ourselves and other women to be able to make arguments and take actions to defend our rights. The rights that we consider relevant and necessary for our lives, not those that governments and men want to spare us.

My vision for Mexican women and girls is that we can remove the barriers of inequality and oppression and all have the same opportunities in health, education, work and decision making. I want to see women with the right to decide whether they want to get married or not and with whom, with the right to decide whether they want to have children and how, with the right to study whatever they want, engineering, PhDs, mathematics, I want to see them free to walk the streets without fear of feeling uncomfortable glances from others, free to drive a car, free to choose how they dress. Because we all have the right!. I hope I can continue to have the strength and courage to be an agent of change in my community, and for that the existence of platforms such as World Pulse is essential, as many of us take force from the feedback and exchange of experiences with other women with whom we share these blogs. We as women have to learn about feminism on our own to see what has happened before us, because it isn’t something that is taught in schools or universities and it doesn’t spread naturally from one generation to another, such as science or religion. We need these spaces of reflection and sharing.

That is why I want to become a correspondent for Voices of our Future, because I think I still have much to give and learn. The gender agenda in my country is currently going through a very critical stage and there are many stories to share on the part of women's organizations. We are fighting for the decriminalization of abortion and the right to education based on equality and nonviolence. We are joining to get the approval of new and better laws and public policies that address the needs of women. We are seeking an increase in gender budgeting. We want more political participation! We want an end to the war! Big changes are happening in this country and the world needs to know about them. Women and girls in Mexico are inspite of all, very alive and working to build a better world for our families.

"Feminism is a flashlight; its light is the justice that illuminates the rooms darkened by intolerance, prejudice and abuse." - Nuria Varela (Spanish feminist writer and journalist)