From gender equality to the fight against inequalities, commitment and urgency are the keystone for advancing our country, which however seems to oppose some cultural and political resistance in the full implementation of a platform of concrete actions, which always find excuses plausible, shifting focus on the digital and “green” transition, equally important but which clearly form a whole of a saving package towards a full implementation of the 2030 Agenda. In short, the difference between staying in the G20 or leaving it!
If when he was Minister the feminism of French President Emmanuel Macron had not materialized in effective measures, beyond the support for initiatives such as the reform of the penal code in November 2016, which in the novelization of article 225-1 far exceeds the current Italian debate on the Zan bill, his Presidency has instead seen him engaged on several fronts. From the completion of the same reform of the penal code on gender equality with art 132-76-77 up to the ministerial circular which "on the basis of constitutional jurisprudence, clarifies that with the notion of gender identity, the legislator refers to gender with which identifies a person, which may or may not correspond to the sex indicated in the civil status registers or to different expressions of belonging to the male or female sex, to include transphobia, including transvestism” as explained by the jurist Emanuele Calò. And with the same dexterity he has strengthened the paternity leave, which has existed in France for 20 years, which was doubled from 14 to 28 days last year.
The closing image of the Generation Equality Forum with becomes important President Macron in the center with Minister Moreno, whose post reads as follows: Minister for Equality between Women and Men, for Diversity and Equal Opportunities. A ministry with a portfolio that just over a month ago brought a law to the Senate to improve the law on domestic violence, finally including important changes relating to economic violence. And it is in this context of the Forum that a new Agenda was drawn up starting from a treasure trove of 40 billion dollars of investments by over 500 civil society organisations, 94 youth organizations and 1000 clients of philanthropy and international business. Concrete plans under the aegis of the United Nations, which with this initiative redeems itself in a way from other past failures, and which guarantees for women and girls and not only for a reconstruction that wants them at the center and not marginalized, isolated and cut them off just because you discriminate in too many countries that systematically trample their rights, which are universal rights and not gender-based!
It is there for all to see that there is a historic change underway on these issues and that the conditions have been created for a new ecosystem that restarts not from promises or subsidies but from investments in gender equality that will lead to more progress faster than expected or mercilessly depicted by the statistics of Global Gender Gap Report that it will take on average 135,6 years to reach parity on a number of indicators around the world, instead of the 99,5 years outlined in the 2020 report. The close scrutiny of both financial and political commitments made by the private to the public, it will give a boost where progress has been too slow for the dictates of the 1995 Beijing Conference not to remain dead letter.
We can hide behind the fact that France is a presidential republic, therefore more streamlined in the implementation of the regulations, and which is fully recognized, with strengths and weaknesses, as a multicultural country or we can take charge of all the strength that our country has shown in adversity such as on football fields and transform that energy in the recognition of a country where the voice of women and girls and children of second generation migrants unites by sending a strong generational message, we change together with a civic sense of constitutional rights and true gender equality because there is no other way than recognizing the strength of a better and stronger world also to fight the pandemic challenges with real social cohesion.
