MADRID, March 8 (Reuters) – Hundreds of purple-clad protesters marched in a number of Spanish cities in competing rallies for Worldwide Girls’s Day, reflecting diverging ideologies inside the feminist motion and a deepening rift inside the leftist coalition authorities.
It’s the second yr that divided opinions on points akin to trans rights and banning prostitution have meant that cities like Madrid, Santiago de Compostela and Gijon staged opposing marches.
Gender points have been one of many cornerstones of the coalition authorities’s coverage agenda. It handed a regulation just lately to make it simpler to entry abortion within the public well being system and have become the primary European nation to introduce paid go away for ladies that suffer painful durations.
However the promotion of gender equality has additionally uncovered fissures, particularly on rights for transgender girls. A lot of the talk was sparked by a transgender rights invoice handed final yr to make it simpler for transgender individuals to vary their authorized gender.
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The ruling Socialists and their far-left junior coalition accomplice Unidas Podemos are additionally divided over whether or not to ban prostitution.
On Tuesday, divisions had been obvious when the Socialists undermined Unidas Podemos by voting with opposition events to reform the “Solely Sure Is Sure” regulation which was meant to higher outline sexual consent however ended up inadvertently offering a loophole for some perpetrators to scale back their sentences.
However, the Socialist ministers joined the primary rally, which supported the political stance of Unidas Podemos.
The festive crowds marched in central Madrid, chanting “Madrid would be the tomb of machismo”, and underneath the banner: “We’re the mandatory yell: feminism is altering all the things”.
Within the various, a lot smaller march, lots of the attendees who had been in opposition to the transgender rights regulation referred to as for the resignation of the equality minister and carried slogans akin to “March 8 is for ladies”.
Barcelona was one of many few cities with a united march with greater than 40,000 individuals attendees carrying placards akin to “What you do to one in every of us you do to all of us”, a standard message in opposition to gender violence in all of Wednesday’s rallies.
Reporting by Charlie Devereux, David Latona and Belén Carreño.
Modifying by Christina Fincher and Josie Kao
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