Photo: taken from Derecha Diario
Text: Cuba News 360 Newsroom
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro opened the 2022 Venezuelan Women’s Congress with a speech declaring that “women have the duty to give birth”. The President spoke at length about this task in front of nearly 2,000 delegates and a large majority of the spectators, since the session was broadcast by Venezolana de Televisión.
“The woman is indispensable. Without women there would simply be no society. We know that women have great tasks in life: the task to give birth, to become pregnant, to give birth,” she assured from the Plaza Bicentenario in the Miraflores Presidential Complex in Caracas, where the event took place.
Maduro, already known in his country and beyond for some inappropriate or even uninformed phrases, presented his opinion in front of 1,982 delegates from across the South American nation on the occasion.
According to the President, it is the responsibility of women to “forge, educate, uplift and build values. All women, in their deep innocence, have an innate sense of protecting and loving humanity, boy and girl.”
These formulations contradict what the Venezuelan president would describe as the main tasks of the women’s congress. For Maduro, this event aims to “unite, revitalize and bring to the fore the country, society as a whole, the agenda of Venezuelan women and the priorities of the Venezuelan feminist movement”.
Previously, the Venezuelan President expressed these ideas about what the role of Venezuelan women should be. In March 2020, on the eve of International Women’s Day, Maduro met with members of the National Plan for Humanized Childbirth, a project to improve care for pregnant women. At the conclusion of the event, the President said: “Woman was created to give birth. So give birth, give birth! All women have six children, all of them. let the land grow Music!”.
The President’s speech sparked several criticisms. One of them was activist Luisa Kislinger from the NGO Women online, who commented that for the Venezuelan government “women only count as childbearing and free labor. Their intention was never to achieve economic or physical autonomy, let alone reproductive autonomy. Your feminism is cardboard.