Women in Chile are taking a stand against the sexist culture that has seen femicide, sexual abuse, and mistreatment become the norm. During social unrest in 2019, the country became the birthplace of this feminist protest anthem. It became a viral hit and it was performed around the world.
It was a way of manifesting, to feel identified at a global level. The song had a global impact, but now the struggle for equality back in Chile continues. Women are speaking out against sexual abuse in universities. Sexual harassment against themselves is a terrible violence. And another thing is what comes next.
Raising the alarm on unequal treatment in the workplace. The health workers within the public sector, the ones who are the least willing. We are tired. And even protesting through propaganda.
performance cards. What do I do? As a commitment?
With the victims? I think we shouldn't forget them. The struggle for equality has lasted decades. But after months of protests, people are now hoping to make their mark on a new constitution. Could this be the moment women lead the charge in changing the country's future?
Cheryl Lynette is the founder of a feminist performance art group. Her work grapples with the subject of violence against women. We are the ones who have to take care of ourselves and we have to advocate for the others who are no longer here. They are writing the names of victims of femicide on each one of these crosses. Today she has gathered a collective of mostly women to recreate the burial of the victims.
We, in the greatest or least, also receive all that patriarchy violence which is what also mobilizes us to do what we do. In this sense, femicides... It also implies the greatest expression of this violence. They chose this desolate river in Santiago because it's the kind of place where women's bodies are found. I always think that when I walk alone in dark places, I could be found here, I could be me.
Personally, I feel that I do this not as a commemoration, but as a reminder and a commitment. An NGO tracked 64 cases of femicide in 2019. A year before, the Chilean government received 28,000 reports of sexual abuse and rape. And in 2017, more than half of survivors were girls younger than 14. But the reality is that...
many cases of sexual assault go unreported. We believe that violence has exceeded all limits of what is possible, of what is imaginable. In early 2018, the rape and murder of a toddler and the gang rape of a young woman led to massive protests in Chile, including the March Against Rape culture, which brought together tens of thousands of people. Around the same time, hundreds of students shut down 14 universities.
They demanded justice for survivors of sexual harassment and rape. One of the most high profile cases was of law student Sofia Brito, who filed a sexual harassment complaint against her professor, Carlos Comona. I suffered sexual and labor harassment.
My offender was the president of the Constitutional Court of Chile and a professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile. The complaint was very complex to carry out because he was a very important teacher, he had a lot of power within the institution. The process took several months and Carlos Cremona rejected all allegations.
One thing is to feel vulnerable within the intimate sphere of the body. And another thing is what comes after, which is the process of denouncing, the process of asking for justice. The prosecutor would ask me, why was I there so late? He tried to shift the blame right towards me. The university dismissed the sexual harassment complaint and gave a temporary suspension to Carmona on the basis of, quote, a lack of integrity.
After the verdict, students responded with protests and university takeovers. In April 2018, we started in... The Australian University is the first feminist institution in 2018. It's starting to question the forms of gender violence that we experience in educational institutions. What is the violence that is reproduced by being a woman in a university?
Following months of protests and sit-ins, Carmona resigned from his job as a professor and left the Constitutional Court. But the feminist protests are not limited to students. On March 8th of 2018, women from all ages and backgrounds participated in a massive feminist general strike and demonstration. It's a gathering that happens every year.
And the real engine behind this movement is made up of local collectives like Pan y Rosas. Barbara Brito is a member. Our feminism actually bets on unifying the fight against oppression of women with the fight against... Only about 50% of Chilean women have a formal job, and women get paid about 35% less than men do. Barbara Brito is a teacher at a public school in Santiago.
She believes there's still a long way to go to improve the lives of working class women. We are teachers who get tired of exhausting work days and not having life at home with our families, with our friends. They are the health workers who, within the public sector, are the ones who earn the least. We are tired.
And that also led us to be part of the front line. During the social outbreak, there are at least two cases There were many cases of abuse and harassment that shocked me. One of them was the case of two high school students who were naked in a police station and were forced to sit down as a way to undermine their morals and to elect them so that they would not go back to the marches and fight.
Another was the case of a medical student who was raped for having a different sexual orientation. The Patriarchal Order! In fact, the Las Tesis viral feminist song is a direct response to the government's violence against women.
a rapist on your way. Immunity for the murderer! He is responsible for the state of Chile, for the police officers, making it clear that they were the ones who raped women. The thesis allowed us to to have a form of manifestation that could involve all women, feel identified at a global level with a problem that has no borders, which is gender violence. In mid-November, after dozens of protesters were killed and thousands wounded on the streets, the government agreed to hold a referendum on Chile's dictatorship-era constitution.
The vote will take place in April of 2020. Barbara hopes that the activism of women like her will make a difference. difference. We can no longer be relegated to the tasks that this society wants to leave us with. And we believe that for that it is also necessary to fight for a Constituent Assembly where we can live in dignity.
The military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet established the current Constitution in 1980. According to Sofia, who specializes in constitutional law, those laws do not take women into consideration. Now she's working on the concept of a new, more egalitarian, Constitution. Having a new Constitution is fundamental because it is a fundamental right.
This Constitution was created within a dictatorial system, a bloody dictatorship that killed thousands of people. It is necessary to continue the feminist Constitution because until now we have been subjugated to an imposition of the dictatorship, an imposition that also reproduces inequalities. For me, being part of the feminist movement was a radical change in my life because all my activism, My professional work is focused on being able to make visible and build justice, which even comes at a time when we don't have to call ourselves feminists, because it will be recognized that all bodies, all identities have equal conditions in society. Women have the strength and we can be part of all this social outbreak that today not only affects Chile but the world.
I feel very proud of all the women around me. and this moment of transformation in which we are all transforming. I can't get tired of staying there because we still have a lot to do.