The hard-working woman

The XXth century has been that of the vertiginous changes. In him, the history has hastened and the face of the world has transformed more quickly and more deeply than never. If we measure it in relation to the past, between 1910 and 2010 they have passed not 100 years of historical time, but many other.

For me, the two most transcendental changes of the epoch that has had us to live, which are called to have more lasting effects, there are the scientific and technological revolution and the unstoppable advance towards the equality between the women and the men. Or if they prefer to say it with all his letters, the beginning of the end of the discrimination of the women with regard to the men.

The first one, because the science and the technology have transformed radically the conditions of life and of work, the economic system, the possibilities of communication, the proper duration of the human life; everything what has to do with our way of living.

The second one, because from the point of view of the justice it has begun to finish the most clamorous of the inequality, which was consisting – and of many ambiences it keeps on consisting - in the mastery of half of the humanity over another half for reasons purely physical (the biggest physical force of the man and the reproductive function of the woman).

And from the point of view of the pure social efficiency, because for centuries the economy has been organized under the beginning of which 50 % of the population was excluded or discriminated in the productive activity. And it not only was and it is unjust; it was and it is an incompatible waste of resources and capacities with a modern economy.

In fact, the women have always worked. But they have always done it in conditions and in secondary functions shut up in the very annoying concept of works for women – that in fact had to be translated like works that the men do not want.

Only the competitiveness is possible in the new economy if there is used 100 % of the available human resources to the maximum of his capacity. I do not say that it is the only excellent factor, but there is a significant relation between economic progress and equality. Or between economic delay and survival of the discrimination. Give a rapid revision to the map of the world and verify it.

I have said it often: in the future, one of the most remembered features of the Shoemaker's period as President will be that in him – and very principally for his personal commitment - the Spanish society it has passed of giant in the way of the equality.

When the justice and the efficiency, or the beginning and the interests, push in the same direction, the change becomes inexorable. And it will be finished when he already has not any sense to celebrate the Day of the Hard-working Woman.