This last week

This is going to be a long and, maybe, boring post, but I need to reflect on how the things have changed this same week and on other stuff. But first I want to state something, which will make sense further on, I'm a catalan atheist scientist, but on top of all that I'm a woman.

As everyone knows yesterday it was the International Day Against Gender Violence, as a woman it affects me. Luckily I've never found myself on a situation like this, but every time I see women that are beaten by their partners or worse I feel there's something really wrong in this world, what makes a man have the right to beat or abuse psychologically a woman? The other day I was reading the newspaper and there was this story of a young afghanese girl who had been raped and became pregnant, they wanted to judge her for adultery as the man who had raped her was a married man! The other option she had was getting married to her agressor and then the family would kill her... This is only one story but the world is FULL of this, girls who have to get marry at a really young age only to find that when they don't serve the purpose of their husbands they are killed or mutilated or else, girls who are sold as prostitutes, women who think that being beaten is normal, girls that think that in a normal relationship they have to do what their boyfriend pleases (this happens in this same country). I'm not one of those feminists who thinks that without men we would live better, but I do think that we need to equiparate ourselves to men, in here we don't have to get married to whoever our parents want, but women still are abused by their partners and we still get less important positions in the companies than men. If we don't claim for gender equality who will?

On the other hand, and as also everyone must know, last Sunday was general elections day in Spain (I actually talked about it) and as everyone knew it would happen the right winged party won the elections. As you know the economy in Spain is not in its best and people thinks that maybe the new government will be able to fix it. In Catalunya we've had a new government for about a year and the solution they have had to fix the economy is cuts: health cuts, public schools cuts, etc. The other thing they are doing is raise prices: gas, university, public transport and medicines. Funny thing is that Catalunya is the region of Spain that is getting more cuts on everything, yet is the one that gets less from the state regarding what it gives (the data is something like we give €22,000 million and get back 1,000 million, maybe the figures are not right but I know it's something like this). I guess that know the new Spanish government are going to cut even more, and I'm scared mainly because being a PhD student means that we need public funding to keep on with our research and given the situation I wonder how long the public funding is going to last, I mean they are only cutting down the budgets, but what about stimulating the economy? What are they doing to do that?

Finally, this week the Catalan government announced that they want to tighten their bonds with the Vatican. The party that is now in the government is formed by two smaller parties, one of them being christian democrats, I don't care what they believe in, but for me the Vatican represents the Catholic Church and ALSO pederast priests. So being an atheist and being against children's abuse I do not agree with this. And taking into account they are only doing this because the Vatican is about to beatify Gaudí, so that's for interest. Still, I'm supposed to be represented in the government and they only care about what catholics think? I know that then they'll say that the majority of Catalan population is a catholic or something, but still...

I don't know if I can't make any conclusion of all this, but I can tell you all that in the years to come there will be more posts like this one...