Purpose:
The Casa de las Mujeres de Donostia is a space for women to meet, debate and reflect in order to influence policies, programmes and projects that aim to advance towards real and effective equality between women and men in all areas of life.
This space is considered essential to be able to build and articulate a meeting place where complicities and experiences can be shared, favouring the generation of collective action in order to move forward together. In this joint work, we will respect the spheres, rhythms and spaces of our own in order to design a political agenda common to all women.
Stimulus/Rationale:
The creation of a women's house in Donostia is a long-standing demand of the feminist and women's movement in the city. Since the 1970s, the decade of the proliferation of women's associations, there has been a demand for a Women's House in Donostia, with the aim of making it a meeting place for the women of Donostia.
This demand is now becoming a reality after a participatory process promoted by the Department of Equality together with women's and feminist associations in Donostia.
The Department of Equality has prioritised as a political commitment the creation of the Women's House within a participative and consensual framework, both with the women of the municipality and with the different entities involved in public equality policies.
The participatory process has been underway since 2008 and is still ongoing.
Process:
The House is co-managed by the local administration and women’s entities organised via an umbrella association called “Casa de las Mujeres”. Around 1,000 women are members of the House and membership is granted for free upon request
While complicated to be put in place due to bureaucratic obstacles, the co-shared management model adopted by the Women’s House was acknowledged as being successful and received a prize from the Basque Government for good management.
Lines of action of the Women's House
- Promote women's participation and associationism in all areas of daily life.
- To promote the design, development and evaluation of equality policies, programmes and projects.
- To contribute not only to improving women's living conditions but also their position in society.
- To promote research and awareness-raising.
- To promote innovation and the articulation of new approaches to equality issues.
The House offers empowerment sessions, counsels on gender violence, feminist self-defence courses, in which migrant women as well as Roma women participate. They also provide legal and labour advice in women-related issues and in specific topics such as women in care services.
The activities related to migrant women or women with a socio-diverse background arose from a need detected by the Equality Department, aware of the need for support and accompaniment for women who arrive alone and who have no network or knowledge of the place and who go to the Women’s House to ask for information. Experience shows that empowerment programmes work better in groups than with individual attention. For this reason, it began as a project of the Department of Equality, but after several years it was decided to move it to Diversity (around 2013).
In addition, immigration in Donostia is mainly by women of Latin origin who work in the care sector (elderly population and childcare). This means that many women start the migration process on their own.
Both Council departments (Equality and Diversity) have a history of continuous collaboration since their creation within the same management and political delegation, as well as being cross-cutting areas whose responsibilities sometimes overlap.
Two main activities related to migrant women or women with a socio-diverse background shall be highlighted:
- The Empalabramiento programme (a pun between word and empowerment in Spanish) is focussed on learning Spanish and improving language competences for migrant women, by deconstructing patriarchal discourses. Contents include grammar, logics, history and feminism and - although the language course is mainly aimed at teaching Spanish language, it also includes basic Basque notions as a common language.
- “Iguálate” (be equal) is a campaign to promote the recognition of diplomas and competences acquired abroad. It pays special attention to women in the care services’ sector, to improve their recognition and employability as well as their working conditions. Although this issue is of national competence, some actions have been developed and implemented by the Basque government through its own legislative competence. Also, there is a partnership with local companies to facilitate the incorporation of these women workers in the labour market. Most of the users of this initiative are Latin American women.
Impact:
The main impact is the creation of networks among the participating women, who share a WhatsApp group, where they support each and meet to do some activity. This reduces their migration stress and loneliness.
These women have participated in visits to museums, libraries, cultural centres, the aquarium, the film festival…visits that probably would not have done on their own.
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