It is urgent to give a gender perspective to the right to health

“The right to health is a fundamental human right and one of the fields where there has been the greatest discrimination against women,” he says. Elizabeth I hate Benitojudge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the period 2016-2021. In an interview for El Economista, he affirms that from the beginning we have been limited to maternity issues and in a percentage to breast cancer, after that all diseases have been left behind and without a gender perspective.

“It has cost us a lot for people to understand that women exist” and that the right to health is a very complex concept, it is not only physical, “we need agua, education, worked, living placeonly with the complex of all these aspects can we guarantee the right of access to health”.

She adds that having the right to decide about our health will allow us to start owning our bodies and that is the beginning of all this change, where it is unacceptable to be violated, excluded and discriminated against.

She recalled that until very recently research began to have a gender focus, for example, it was barely discovered that women’s hearts are more shifted to the right and that the symptomatology for women is not arm pain but gastric disorders. “As these types of elements have been gradually understanding that women’s right to health is also very broad and that it also has to do with social, economic, geographical, educational elements, among others.”

Human rights burst into international law after the Second World War and especially after the world declaration in 1948. “But it took us much longer for women to make us visible, for them to recognize us as subjects and with equality.” It was not until 1993 that the World Conference on Human Rights was achieved with the enormous effort of all the women of the world to include us, “until then, we had a separate category.”

In the 21st century, in 2006, the first health case was presented in the Inter-American Court where a sentence with a gender perspective. “It is the first time that a case of negligence has been analyzed where the fact of being a woman weighed on the sentence, from then on what happens to women when they have flagrant violations of human rights is examined in all sentences,” He said.

defeat the barriers

Hate Benito was the second woman to occupy the position of judge in the Inter-American Court in 40 yearsshe assures that, in order to open spaces for change in health, the hegemonic model in the matter must be strongly challenged, “because it is a heteropatriarchalessentialist that normalizes the female body, that is, places women in a position of inferiority compared to men”.

Today the representation of women in parliament barely reaches 25%, only 22 countries out of 206 worldwide have women heads of state and 119 countries have never been presided over by women, without representation at this level it is very difficult for women influence political, management and, of course, gender decisions.

The also activist for the eradication of violence against women ensures that we can talk about diseases in women, but if we do not go to the root of why society is organized in such an unequal and unfair way, we are not going to advance in The matter.

“Latin America is the most unequal continent and that inequality relapses into a perpetuated system. All the frightening figures have to do with an organizational structure of society that is based on inequalities, discrimination and the subordination of women. A patriarchal model that is based as a form of social organization and that it is men, the male sex, who have been the decision makers and have left women in subordination.

He added that it is time to make a transformation of the norms in the medium and long term, reverse the institutional conditions that reproduce gender inequalities, greater access to information, health, diagnosis, medical practices and the eradication of violence. sexual. “Working on the transformation of norms and the promotion of higher levels of care implies a counterpart from the public function that can only be championed with women in key positions.”

He said that we cannot allow health and women’s cases to continue to be prosecuted, to reach the courts, that speaks of States that are not attending to the needs of citizens.

Inequalities hurt us, but how do we generate cultural changes?

Hate Benito assures that this is not written, it is built through different success stories, experiences and turning to the experience of countries similar to ours, “working together, but most importantly, we require women in decision-making to generate different environments, based on our own realities”, he stresses.

“As a famous US judge put it, Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburgwomen have to be in all places where decisions are made, only when we are at all levels, our presence can make a difference”.

On the other hand, he said that it is only through education that discourse can be transformed into facts, “only in this way can we aspire to a more just, equal and inclusive society.”

Add in the frame Roche Press Day that, in this sense, the role of the press in the transformation is fundamental, “it is what makes us understand that in the education that is currently taught from home or in schools, there is a patriarchal bias that exclusively benefits men. It is very important to send messages so that women get involved. Investigative articles are very important, but also those of the daily news”.

Elizabeth I hate Benito is a Costa Rican judge, politician and lawyer, activist for the eradication of violence against women. She was the president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), a position she assumed in the period 2020-2021. She has been a judge of the IACHR since 2016, of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In Costa Rica, her native country, she held the positions of Second Vice President of the Republic (1998-2002) and Government Minister on several occasions.

Women in the IACHR
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights began to work in 1979, since then there have only been five women judges until the last integration. Currently, to reverse this situation, governments have to compulsorily present women candidates. Today, thanks to that fight by former judge Elizabeth Odio Benito, there are three judges from seven places: Nancy Hernández López, Verónica Gómez and Patricia Pérez Goldberg.

nelly.toche@eleconomista.mx