Women ask for more participation in the State and in the law

This Wednesday experts from various countries revealed that the participation of women in the State and in the world of law is still lower than that of men. This prior to the installation tomorrow in Barranquilla of the XXVII Biennial Congress of the World Association of Jurists.

Gender inequality is not an exception in State affairs, despite the fact that women have increasing access to university education, said the participants in the panel “Women and the consolidation of the rule of law.”

“In Colombia, more than 50% of law students are women and more than half of those who practice the legal profession are also women, but less than 15% are part of managerial positions either in the public sector or private, “said first lady María Juliana Ruiz.

Ruiz, a lawyer by profession, was moderator in the panel in which the former president of the Constitutional Court of Chile, Marisol Peña Torres; the former president of the American Bar Association of the United States, Patricia Lee; the Vice President of the Office of the Spectrum Orange Group, Elisabeth Cassin; the president of the World Association of Jurists (WJA) in Spain, María Eugenia Gay, and former Bolivian Foreign Minister Karen Longaric.

All of them approached the challenges, possibilities and capacities that they have in today’s world, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, from a female perspective.

The participants in the panel agreed that wide gender inequalities still persist in most of the countries of the region despite the advances that have been made in traditionally patriarchal societies.

For Longaric, the problem of gender discrimination “is much more notorious in sectors where patriarchy has been predominant throughout history and has closed opportunities to women.”

For her part, Torres highlighted the role of education and declared herself “proud that in Chile women occupy 48% of the staff of the Judiciary, while men have 51%, but there are still inequalities in behavior towards them “.

The lawyers also referred to technology in the current context of law, to the digital empowerment of women as a claim mechanism to close the gender gap and to the fulfillment of the goals of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development of the United Nations.

“As is the case in many nations of the world, in Spain there are also laws that promote gender parity and an example is the zip lists that even lead us to participation percentages of 60%, but when we see the management positions in the Judicial Power, we see that women occupy only 17%, “Gay explained.

The XXVII Biennial Congress of the WJA will be attended by the King of Spain, Felipe VI, who will arrive in Barranquilla on Wednesday night.

This event will debate for two days the rule of law as an instrument for development for nations with the assistance of authorities and personalities from politics and the world economy. (I)