Gender Politics

SPAIN'S MINISTER OF EQUALITY IS PUTTING ONE OF EUROPE'S MOST FEMINIST GOVERNMENTS TO THE TEST

- Lisa Abend

IT WAS A SUNDAY MORNING IN EARLY FEBRUARY IN MADRID, and Spain’s Minister of Equality was on a war footing. Having eschewed business attire for the occasion, Irene Montero rose on sneaker-clad feet from her seat onstage at a local cultural center and addressed her supporters. A key reform on sexual violence that her ministry had spearheaded was under attack, and the meeting was intended to rally the troops from Unidas Podemos, the progressive political party that she helps lead and which, along with the Socialist Party, has formed Spain’s coalition government since January 2020. “This law is more than just a law,” she said. “It’s a process of democratizing society. It is not the ministry’s law, or the government’s, or the parliament’s. It is the law of the women of this country.”

Spain is at an inflection point on gender. Since Montero became Minister in 2020, a nation that not 50 years ago required women to obtain their father’s or husband’s permission in order to work has consolidated its position among Europe’s most feminist countries. Her ministry has taken measures to combat rising rates of domestic violence, introduced legislation that extends LGBTQ rights, protects reproductive health—including guaranteeing menstrual leave—and makes consent the determining factor in cases of sexual assault. In December, it also approved the so-called Trans Law, which allows people to declare their own gender, rather than requiring a diagnosis of dysphoria.