| | |  Editorials | December 2009 
The Key of Equality
 Miguel Angel Ferrer - miguelangelferrer-mentor.com.mx
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December 04, 2009
For the past 35 years, Article 4 of the Constitution has established that men and women are equal before the law. But legal or formal equality doesnīt always imply realistic equality.
Even so, there are many areas in society where equality between men and women is an absolute reality. This is the case, for example, with education, from kindergarten to university.
Health is another similarity. Men and women receive identical medical and hospital attention. This is also true in politics: men and women have and exercise the same rights.
If itīs true that women donīt occupy directorial positions in the same proportion as men, this phenomenon canīt be attributed to deliberate politics. Rather, itīs the result of a patriarcal culture that is being chipped away at every day, but has yet to crumble all together.
Having arrived at these levels of equality, or if you prefer, at these low levels of inequality, has implied a decades-long effort in education.
One could say that the route to equality began when all girls had access to school.
But thereīs no doubt that the possibilities of equality between men and women grew exponentially at the exact moment of the technologic-scientific revolution, putting the greatest tool for personal and familiar liberation in their hands: modern contraceptive methods.
Today the woman is, for the first time in history, decider of her own destiny. She is no longer chained to inevitable maternity.
Previously, unwanted pregnancy closed the doors to university, paid employment, a career and social mobility. Today, women have voluntary pregnancy in their hands.
On this long and rough path, in which education and contraception have played important roles, itīs necessary to take another step forward.
The search for complete gender equality passes, necessarily, through the control of voluntary motherhood. And this control can only be achieved when no law impedes a woman from deciding about her own motherhood. That right to decide is already a reality in many countries, as well as in Mexico City.
But it hasnīt been a free concession from governments and institutions. It has been the fruits of fighting, decisive, brave, consequential and tireless fighting, from feminist movements and perceptive, revolutionary masculine minds.
One could say, then, that the levels of equality achieved for women are mostly the product of the best womenīs and menīs efforts.
Itīs up to the next generation of women who know, are able and want to fight for their rights, along with the best men.
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