Breathe
By Cristina Massa
Being a woman and, moreover, ambitious to the point of wanting to exercise all the corresponding rights, in all stages and facets of life, requires no small amount of energy and dedication. The first thing, of course, is to find out what those rights are.
One begins by discovering that there is no "Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens", homologous to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, which inspires many modern political constitutions, including the Mexican one. It is not surprising that behind the generic masculine of man and citizen, which includes - in theory - women, so much of what makes us different from the sexes is olympically ignored.
Continue reading the Mexican Constitution and, from Article 1, we find the prohibition of discrimination based on gender, age and marital status. We have the suspicion that this actually means that the maximum norm does not condone what it does in practice: denying women access to the full exercise of their rights, especially if they are old and/or single after a certain age. Add the possibility of being an indigenous or Afro-descendant woman, homosexual or trans, disabled or poor, and we have a person as far from the exercise of her rights as from the moon.
In our social contract, women are valued - not much, but somewhat - for their capacity to gestate, give birth and raise children. For this reason, constitutional rights specifically aimed at women go that way:
- Receive reproductive education (art. 3);
- To freely choose the number and spacing of children (art. 4), which, by the way, carries the subliminal message that zero is not the number the constituent had in mind;
- Not to perform work that requires considerable effort and represents a danger to their health in relation to pregnancy, to have maternity leave and time for breastfeeding, and that the employer guarantees pregnant women safe working conditions to protect the product of conception (art. 123).
There are some rights correlated to this valorization of women of reproductive age: some state laws provide for the right to menstrual hygiene and to leave for disabling dysmenorrhea.
But once a woman has concluded her reproductive stage, she falls into irrelevance in terms of explicit provision for her rights. Not a word announces attention to the needs she will have as she enters the mysterious world of accelerated estrogen loss and the eventual disappearance of menstruation.
She had better have grandchildren to be one of the grandmothers with whom our leaders accuse the hitmen who kill mercilessly because, otherwise, she disappears from the scene. She had better be an encyclopedia of home remedies, popular songs and sayings, so that someone will turn to her for her wisdom of yesteryear. As for rights, it is out of the question.
As a consequence of this system that focuses on women's ability to bring children into the world and preserve traditions, the vast majority of women experience menopause in silence, among a medical, labor and social community that is poorly informed. Many of them also live it in increasing precariousness, because as they constitute 55% of the informal economy, they will face the symptoms without access to the social security that should ensure a family doctor with a comprehensive vision, and without a pension that guarantees them resources beyond mere survival.
On the contrary, without access to a properly articulated health care system, women will go to one private doctor after another, whether in a similar pharmacy or in a first level hospital, who will treat the most serious symptoms in isolation during the 15 or more years that she will have to continue working. This for hot flashes, that for vaginal dryness, that for headaches, the recommendation to go on a diet for those extra pounds, a calcium supplement for increasing bone fragility, the referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist to treat that apparent depression caused by lack of sleep, or perhaps dismissal from work triggered by absenteeism and difficulty concentrating.
Considering that the symptoms of perimenopause begin to manifest themselves at age 45, that the average life expectancy of Mexican women is 75 years, and adding about 12 years from birth to first menstruation, most women will spend considerably more years out of the reproductive cycle than in it.
Therefore, we must redouble our efforts so that the rights to education, health, work and non-discrimination protected by the Constitution, acquire a concrete and specific content aimed at menopause in dignity. We need women legislators, in leadership positions in companies, on boards of directors, designers of public policies, who are the spokespersons of a legal, labor, economic, financial, business, social, health and human agenda. We need organizations like Sin Reglas (https://sin-reglas.mx/), which raises awareness, educates and makes menopause visible to both individuals and companies.
Because we will all get there.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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