The purpose of my coeducational project
The purpose of why I had the need to create this subject is in the following article that I wrote at the time, in which I expose my absolute conviction that the only way to end inequality is through EDUCATION, as the only TOOL essential for it. Only educating in equality we can end, among other things, with social scourges as horrible as gender violence and we will be able to build a more JUST world between men and women by EQUALITY.
Article by Mercedes Sánchez published in the digital magazine CON LA A
The qa'ida or the invisible norm.
As a woman, I have often wondered why so many injustices and inequalities are committed against women for the simple fact of being a woman. At times, the assault on our rights is so obvious and insulting that I still do not know why the world does not rise up crying out from the rooftops for justice so that such a thing can never be committed against anyone again.
In this sense, I have had to read Fatema Mernisi to discover a logical explanation for this. In "Dreams on the Threshold", Mernisi tells us about the qa'ida or invisible norm. He applies it to refer to the restrictive norms that marked the lives of women within a harem, whether they were open or closed. He maintains that qa'ida is where there are human beings, that is, everywhere and that, unfortunately, this invisible norm, moreover, will always be against women. If you respect her as a woman, nothing will happen to you but, otherwise, you will suffer persecution, humiliation and all kinds of outrages, in addition to those you already suffer, I add, for the fact of obeying her faithfully. The interesting thing is to see that this invisible norm can also be applied to the lives of Western women, although at first it is difficult for us to recognize it.
From its origins "the world did not worry about being fair or not with women", the norms have always been made to take away or diminish all our rights. Thus, since the world is the world, men and women have worked from sunrise to sunset (I can say that women continued to do so after sunset) and while some earned money or species, others did not they never earned anything. This is where that invisible rule began, the qa'ida. Nobody knows who invented it, or implanted it, but there it is, marking the inequality between both sexes. When, later, women in the West began to achieve greater independence and recognition of their rights, falsely, the qa'ida is still there, diminishing, still stripping us of them. It is invisible, that is its greatest power. For this reason, although we may have believed that we are free and that all the way is done, there is still much to do, this fight has only just begun.
Women live between invisible walls that mark our lives and our actions. The other day some chilling statistics were released: 60% of students in universities are women, the best academic records are the same, but only a small percentage of them will reach positions of high responsibility in companies. Only one in three women engineers will participate in research projects and in most cases will give up her professional life in favor of the family. The man does not. Even, already in the University, the woman will consider participating in projects or research grants if her partner does not see it favorably. Isn't this the qa'ida? Isn't this the same as the rules of a harem with invisible walls, but with even higher walls? Isn't this worse than what you see and can't fight against?
What then we must ask ourselves is how to discover it, how to make it visible to the eyes of the world. As Mernisi says, there is nothing tangible that, unfortunately, makes it possible for us to make it visible, except the pain it produces after having the qa'ida acted. Thus, here too, in the West, there is the pain of gender violence and its very serious consequences, the pain of doing the same job and not receiving the same salary, the pain of not being able to choose or decide what to do or with your life and with your body, the pain of continuing to feel, that the problem is still being born a woman. Everything that has the category of prohibited in the life of a woman would belong to the invisible norms of the qa'ida. Make no mistake, the qa'ida is and exists in most of the world for us.
When there are rules restrictive, one knows what to expect, if you fight or save yourself or become silent and stay, but at least you know who to fight against. Therefore, there is so much left to achieve full equality, because there is still a high invisible wall called inequality or, which is the same, although we are Westerners, "qa gone".
However, I do think that there is something that can be tangible and that can end this invisibility so harmful to every woman and that something is called education. The action of educating in equality can tear down all walls, even those of those who say that these walls do not exist.
With this subject we will try to tear down, at least, part of that wall to try to build a fairer world, where equality and the recognition of rights between men and women are a possible reality. Help me get it !!
MERCEDES SÁNCHEZ VICO