María Florencia Freijo: "Men have monopolized the use of money"

The political scientist specializing in gender perspective in the judicial system María Florencia Freijo (Mar del Plata, 1987) reviews from a historical perspective how women have been trained over centuries to always be at the service of others, giving up spaces of freedom. On (Bad) educated (Today’s topics, 2021) offers keys to understand why traditional roles are still being played today.

-If women are the ones who are mainly in charge of educational tasks, what is their responsibility in the perpetuation of a model that limits their power?

Thinking about our responsibility as primary educators has the answer in the same question. Why, in addition to being educated to care exclusively, are we to blame for this system? Of course we also reproduce patriarchal models of thought, but to believe that an individual’s education passes only through his mother is to put too much weight on our shoulders. Absences also educate, such as lack of affectivity in masculinity, history books without women or advertising.

-She says that to break stereotypes, women must also break their deep fear of being alone. Do you think that this is an obstacle to moving towards equality?

Among the barriers that have to be transformed is the deep fear of loneliness, because we are educated in a romantic ideal, but this is not, at all, the main obstacle to moving forward. The main one is that men commit to stop reproducing exclusion mechanisms in positions of power, because we do not reach 20% representation in decision-making positions in any company. We have been fighting for our political, civil, reproductive and sexual rights for centuries. When are men going to stop resisting? The first change is that.

“To believe that an individual’s education passes only through his mother is to put too much weight on women. Absences also educate & rdquor;

-What exactly does it mean that money has sex?

I refer to the work ‘The hidden sex of money’ by the psychologist Clara Coria, who has studied this subject for years. If I speak of success, do you think of a man or a woman? Why do men earn more? Why do they earn more when they become fathers and women earn less when they become mothers? The answer is that those who have monopolized the use of money have been men. Through this money, which catapulted them to leadership positions, they were able to continue reproducing mechanisms that have relegated us to care activities. In the world, seven out of ten women are poor. How many women are there among the 10 richest people in the world? None. Boy, money has sex!

-I don’t know if you know that in the Congress of Deputies a member of Vox called “witch & rdquor; to a socialist deputy. Why does the extreme right recover that archetype? What is your hypothesis?

I think the right wing has found constituencies because of the failure of progressive governments to redistribute wealth and because of deep resistance to feminism. The right-wing, at least in Latin America, no longer speak of the left, but rather go against gender ideology, against “those feminists.” When they speak of family values, they again delimit good women from witches / bad women. Men do not deal with this dichotomy because their reputations are not fragmented in their private and public life. “The good guys” have always been the ladies who speak softly, the ones who don’t dispute power with other men.

-What physical and psychological impact does being trained to be good entail?

It is difficult to measure, but the studies of the last ten years tell us about a deterioration in the emotional and mental health of women. If we add the physical consequences of the amount of aesthetic treatments we undergo, the impact is enormous. We get more depressed, we are more medicated, -or badly medicated by an androcentric medicine- and there is a huge mental load related to how to go down the street to avoid being attacked, how to dress or how to respond to a boss.

The right-wing, at least in Latin America, no longer speak of the left, but rather go against gender ideology & rdquor;

-Should we rebel against the compliment? Against the comments on our body that we have not asked anyone?

Yes, decisively. The street compliment is based on the basis that the public space belongs to men and there they can say anything. It’s not about who likes it and who doesn’t. It’s about millions of girls being watched – most of the time by older men – and this is intimidating. When we go down the street alone for the first time, there is a familiar fear of what men might do to us. On the other hand, the children circulate in total freedom.

-What you propose in the book is to stop being good and start being (well) educated?

It is difficult to be ‘well’ educated in a society that continues to educate for inequality. I invite the reader to dive into the videos most viewed by girls and boys. Which ones have millions of users? Those of eight-year-old girls who teach how to paint their nails and clean the house and boys of the same age who explain how to set up a video game console. Sooner rather than later, I will write ‘Mal Educados’, but in the meantime accessing knowledge brings freedom.

María Florencia Freijo: “Men have monopolized the use of money”

Leave a Comment Cancel reply