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NI UNA MENOS IS ‘BUILDING A NEW GENERATION OF MILITANCY’ AGAINST
PHYSICAL AND ECONOMIC VIOLENCE  
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Marta Facchini Irupé Tentorio
December 6, 2024
Il Manifesto Global
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_ Between 2015 to 2023 laws were enacted guaranteeing support to
victims of violence and to families of victims of femicide; training
on gender and violence was made mandatory. President Javier Milei has
mounted a full-scale attack against these gains. _

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The rise of Ni Una Menos marks a before and after in the history of
Argentine. The movement against sexist violence, established in 2015,
changed the history of Argentine feminism and showed the rise of the
transfeminist masses as a political subject.

In nearly 10 years of struggle, the movement shone a spotlight on all
forms of violence against women and dissident subjectivities through
protesters’ bodies occupying the streets, marching and organizing
assemblies in working-class neighborhoods and universities. It has
named femicides in plain language and made them impossible to sweep
under the rug.

“Ni una menos!” (“Not one woman less!”) was the rallying cry
for the thousands of people who took part in the first historic march,
which took place on June 3, 2015 in Buenos Aires and 120 other cities
across the country in reaction to the brutal femicide of Chiara Páez,
killed at age 14 by her boyfriend because she was pregnant.

It was neither the first nor the last such killing, but Chiara's death
was the fuse that lit the fire. The movement would return to the
streets the following year, on June 3, 2016, after the femicide of
Lucía Pérez, who was raped and murdered at age 16. “We want us to
be alive, we want us to be free,” was the slogan in the streets for
a mobilization that was the starting point of a mass protest movement.

Since then, Ni Una Menos has given rise to “many changes in society,
mainly in sensibilities and social relations at the personal, labor,
student, union, and institutional levels,” researcher and
sociologist Lucy Cavallero, an activist in the movement, tells il
manifesto. “It started off a social process in which levels of
tolerance toward gender-based violence are changing. It has challenged
patriarchal hierarchies and started a political mobilization about
everyday life that was not visible or conscious before,” she adds.

The changes can be seen in the ways of taking over the streets: in the
posture and gaze with which feminisms are developing and organizing
action in union spaces, schools and universities. It is a desire for
collective decision-making, a form of political imagination. In the
gatherings, participants share their urgent concerns, feelings and
strengths.

“A new generation has begun its militancy in this cycle of
protests” where an intersectional critique is being built,
researcher and activist Veronica Gago tells il manifesto. “Ni Una
Menos has built up the possibility of connecting very different
battles from the grassroots level. It has embodied the words of Angela
Davis: struggles for justice are indivisible. Fighting femicides leads
to thinking about how they tie in with police violence and housing
violence. It’s not just a theoretical approach: it is a work of
political coordination.”

Since 2017, Ni Una Menos began a reflection on economic violence and
the consequences of foreign debt on daily life. The strike as a means
of protest has made it possible to talk about unpaid work, making
visible in the public space what had been confined to the space of the
home: the inequality in the labor force and the unpaid hours of care
work.

With the feminist strikes, linked to the tradition of political and
social struggles in Argentina, the movement expanded to women working
in the underground economy and organizations for a people’s economy,
questioning the very idea of what labor is.

In its work setting up alliances across the local territories, Ni Una
Menos was instrumental in strengthening gender policies in Argentina
and in securing legal, safe and free abortion. In the span of time
between 2015 to 2023, the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity was
set up; laws were enacted to guarantee economic support to those
subjected to violence and to the families of victims of femicide; and
training on gender and violence was made mandatory for those working
in public sectors, making it compulsory to use inclusive language.

Far-right President Javier Milei with his proverbial chainsaw has
mounted a full-scale attack against all of these gains.

“These are revolutionary changes, hence the level of fascist
neo-conservative reaction we are experiencing. We are facing a global
phenomenon that has its own peculiarities in Argentina, which saw a
feminist movement in the streets, an intergenerational mass movement.
They find it unbearable that the right to abortion has been won,
involving the public health institutions, and that sex education is
being taught in schools. They’re talking about a birth rate crisis
because over ten years the numbers of teenage pregnancies has
decreased by 50 percent,” Veronica Gago adds. 

“They cannot tolerate the fact that feminism is denouncing the debt
of the country and of families, the fiscal injustice that supports
oligarchies and extractive projects. And, most of all, the fact that
it is not a neoliberal ‘empowerment’ movement.” Instead, it is a
collective desire to change everything.

_Originally published
at [link removed] on 2024-11-23_

_Il manifesto was founded in 1969 on the idea that truth and
freethinking are more important than everything else, including
profit. The paper pays for its editorial idealism in the form of lost
advertising. But we more than make up for this in the support of tens
of thousands of subscribers who believe a better world is possible.
There are no owners (il manifesto is a cooperative), and the editor
and managers are elected every four years by the employees. We
maintain a newsroom in Rome and correspondents around the world,
filing dispatches from Paris, London, Berlin, Jerusalem, Havana, New
York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. _

* Argentina
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* Feminism
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* Femicide
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* Javier Milei
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* far right
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