By María Asunción Collante Jara
On March 20, 2020, our country entered a total quarantine after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and since then, the economic and human losses have been considerable. At the same time, the structural conditions of gender inequality have been reinforced by the negligence of the Paraguayan State, which has generated multiple forms of violence against women.
Along the way, we have consistently heard a misleading phrase: that violence against women in confinement has become “another silent pandemic.” And no, the violation of women’s rights cannot be considered a disease or a virus, much less something exclusively sanitary. Because violence against women is something structural that has been escalating every year and confinement has only reinforced it. This is the context of vulnerabilities for women in Paraguay, a country with deep gender gaps reflected in unequal salaries, minority political participation and a limitation in women’s physical autonomy with respect to access to their sexual and reproductive rights.
The entire quarantine period has become for many women a constant struggle for survival during abandonment and persecution. Already from the beginning of Mario Abdo Benítez’s government, the situation of women presented a desolate scenario in the social, economic, political, and cultural spheres, which, as the first restrictions were imposed, worsened. This is reflected in the 18,000 calls registered in 2020 (almost double that of 2019) to the 137 hotline for Containment and Assistance against Violence and the 71 femicides that occurred since the beginning of the pandemic until the end of 2021.
Moreover, if we focus on the economic sector, it was women who were the most affected. The Household Survey conducted by the Ministry of Labor on employment indicators for the years 2019 and 2020, shows that it was women who were hit the hardest economically. A total of 411,463 women had difficulties in accessing work (underemployment, unemployment and circumstantial inactivity) (see figure below), much higher than the situation of men (295,884).
Figure 1. Unemployment, underemployment and circumstantial inactivity, by gender (2019-2020)
Source: Image extracted from MTEES Observatorio laboral with data from DGEEC Permanente Household Survey 2020. This does not include departments of Boquerón and Alto Paraguay. See here
Employment difficulties pushed many women to organize themselves with the so-called Ollas Populares (potlucks where everyone chips in) in neighborhoods where countless families were left without work. Women residing in the outskirts of the capital, such as Bañado Sur, prepared 17 popular pots to assist some 2,500 people last year. In other areas such as the city of Itauguá, some 30 km from the capital, some 300 families of the “Territorio Social Patria Nueva 2” settlement received lunches and snacks from three soup kitchens during the first year of quarantine and were only sustained thanks to the women’s struggle in various ways, from requesting support from supermarkets to demonstrating in front of the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN). In fact, in September 2020, Law No. 6603 was enacted to support and assist the soup kitchens thanks to social pressure led by women who stood up to the government’s inefficiency.
The judicial and patriarchal pact against women has also been constant during the hardest stage of the quarantine. In agreement with conservative and church elites, the justice system has had a clear political line dedicated to discriminate, silence, abandon and persecute women. The first case was that of the lawyer María Esther Roa, who was charged in 2020 for “violating the sanitary quarantine”, after participating in a demonstration against corruption in front of the National Pantheon of Heroes. Another case of the same year refers to the prosecution of Mariángela Abdala, Paloma Chaparro and Gisselle Noemí Ferrer Pasotti for vandalism that took place in the same Pantheon, during a protest against the disappearance of Carmen Oviedo Villalba, alias “Lichita”.
Already in 2021, we can add the arbitrary detention of Vivian Genes, a student leader who participated along with other young people in a social outburst known as the third Paraguayan March in which hundreds of people took to the streets of the country to demand the resignation of the president due to the waste of money and the lack of medicines in public hospitals. On that occasion, a judge requested the preventive imprisonment of Genes for the alleged crimes of “common risks, disturbance to public peace, damage to things of common interest, damage to constructed works or technical means of work“, in reference to the fire at the headquarters of the governing party. Genes was subjected to deprivation of liberty in different police stations for several weeks and was only not sent to the Buen Pastor Women’s Prison thanks to the student pressure in the streets demanding the nullity of the measure.
we have consistently heard a misleading phrase: that violence against women in confinement has become “another silent pandemic.” And no, the violation of women’s rights cannot be considered a disease or a virus, much less something exclusively sanitary. Because violence against women is something structural that has been escalating every year and confinement has only reinforced it.
This judicial mechanism was also reflected in the cover-up of men who violated the dignity of women. The case of the young woman Alexa Ocampo, who accused the priest Silvestre Olmedo of harassment, is extremely illustrative. The justice system proved that the accused Olmedo did indeed grope the young woman, but considered absolving him of the punishable act of sexual harassment arguing that “there must be other facts to consider it to be harassment “.
Finally, another case worth remembering was the complaint in March 2020 of Congresswoman Kathia González against a businessman “sponsored by colorado politicians” who had sexually threatened her. Despite repeated complaints made to the prosecutor’s office, the case was simply ignored.
These episodes of abandonment in economic and labor assistance to women, patriarchal authoritarianism, as well as persecution and judicial discrimination, demonstrate the state’s attempt to undermine women’s rights. Let us hope that the different powers of the State assume once and for all public decisions and policies in favor of women’s rights, to guarantee a life free of violence, without discrimination and with a justice system free of sexist stereotypes.
*María Asunción Collante Jara (Paraguay, 1992). Degree in Communication Sciences from the National University of Asuncion. She is a freelance communicator, teacher, and founder of Lupa Lila Observatory.
Cover image: Agencia IP