There was a woman who was many women. He plunged his hands into the land he made fertile, with which he fed his mate and family, safer than the hunting and fishing of men, who sometimes returned home as he left. It was a time of matriarchy, which did not oppress. When private ownership was established over the initial means of production, patriarchy was born. A woman was, as the German envoy and writer August Bebel said, a slave before slaves existed. So it was in the celebrated Athenian democracy which excluded them, like slaves, or when the feudal lord even had the right of seigneur over the wives of his vassals. With the French Revolution, which swept away privileges, the struggle for the emancipation of women began. The Declaration of the Rights of Man forgot women. They began to think about whether they could change their attitude, not only towards man and family, but also towards society.

Recognize a woman every day

The Industrial Revolution brought women into factories, working in greater numbers than men because they were paid less than men. His work, as now, was twofold, one unpaid and the other poorly paid, with grueling hours and vulnerability, like children, to accidents and illnesses. But his family needed his salary. Middle-class women demanded that they be allowed to study at universities. Overwork, their own prejudices and those of others, laws that prevented their membership in political associations, conspired to make women aware of their oppressive position and what they could do to end it. Some wanted to be banned from working, but socialists argued that it was necessary for personal fulfillment, financial independence and family needs. There was, paradoxically, a disenfranchisement in the trade to which black women believed they belonged: In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, they were ordered to walk behind in marches demanding the vote for women. Feminism split when the bourgeois sector declared that it was fighting “against everything male” and that it was not defending poor women persecuted by the authorities.

They leave their mark in history

(…) Women will also be the wind in the world this March 8, rushing through the streets and entering the windows.

Thomas Mann said that a woman, to the extent that she finds herself, becomes different from what she was. With Ecuador’s liberal constitution of 1897, women were already considered citizens, so they could pay. However, it was only in 1924 that a woman, Dr. Matilde Hidalgo, wanted to exercise that right and after certain obstacles from the state apparatus managed by men, she succeeded. Therefore, more women must take up their role and dispel fears.

Against numerous and cruel femicides, wage differences that unreasonably privilege men, dismissals of pregnant women, reproduction of negative stereotypes, instrumentalization of their bodies, despite all their and society’s demands, women will be the wind in the world that passes through the streets and penetrates through the windows this March 8. . (OR)