The prizes, prizes are and have the value they have, which is not the same for everyone. Although that is not an obstacle so that the winners almost always taste of glory. However, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature is not the same as winning the first prize in the writing contest organized by Coca-Cola in 1968.
In any case, the awards have an undeniable importance to the extent that they point out people with talents or performances that deserve social recognition and thus establish models, create benchmarks. They are not just innocent tributes, but they point a kind but inexorable finger at what has value in this society.
Xàtiva has been handing out its 9 d’Octubre awards for not too many years. And he has always done it to people with more than proven merits. This is what happens this year, which will be received by two men of recognized prestige in different fields: Pep Botifarra and Jacint Martínez. The work of two associations, Acofem and Aspromivise, both dedicated to essential care tasks related to mental health and disability, is also recognized.
No woman appears in the winning trio, probably because there hasn’t been enough interest to look for them, although there are sure to be as deserving of the award as anyone else. And that forgetfulness, that omission, must be combated from loyal and constructive criticism because it detracts from the commitment to equality that this council maintains. Signed and initialed in the recently approved Municipal Equality Plan that aims to fight against the inequalities that affect women, being invisibility, humiliating and painful, one of them.
In any case, as stated by a former president of Xateba —Association for Equality and against Gender Violence—, there is only satisfaction for the recognition that the award means for an association that has worked for many years to dignify people’s lives with disabilities in the city and the region. A job that, as Fina García pointed out, is carried out mostly by women and is based on a collaborative model of care linked to the capacity for teamwork, generous and selfless, of women.
Perhaps the jury has not valued this reality in its deliberations, nor has it highlighted it in the justification for its decision. And that is where the necessary sensitivity is missing, the egalitarian vision capable of detecting the absence of individual women in the winning trio.
The equality plan establishes among its measures the need to focus and recognize the merits of the women of the city in very different ways: from the nomenclature of the streets to the public recognition of their contributions to society. It proposes to fight against inequalities in all areas. It is a commitment to the residents of the city and to all the people who believe they have the right to live in equality.
Let it be fulfilled in all its terms, because what women need is not more signed papers, more speeches or electoral promises, but facts and actions, both in daily affairs and in major decisions that affect the economy, employment, housing or personal safety.
We would like to thank the author of this write-up for this remarkable material
the award goes to…