Rosario Alises with her book ‘Pioneers of the 20th century in a place in La Mancha’ / Lanza
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A member of ‘Feministas de Pueblo’, this activist works to guarantee the rights of women in small rural areas, often invisible and with serious consequences. Facing this # 25N participates in the campaign ‘Not one petal less’
Curious, committed and vital. This is Rosario Alises Valdelomar, a 62-year-old doctor and writer from Villarrubia de los Ojos, who came to feminism through her own observation and activism.
Although she lived in Madrid for more than four decades, she considers herself a rural woman, especially since at the beginning of the century she returned to her hometown and became interested in the environment that surrounds her. Then and already encouraged by the connection acquired in the 15M movements, especially with the Mortgage Platform, she approached one of the most peaceful and revolutionary currents that have contributed to changing the destiny of half the population, that is, women.
As a challenge to the established, Alises Valdelomar met feminism and “hooked me.”
This is what she says from Molina de Aragón, where she now works in the 112 Emergency Service, and as a member of Feministas de Pueblo, she is committed to the difficult task of being able to change some of the social keys of non-urban areas, the smallest nuclei where customs remain inexorable.
The inequalities suffered by women “are practically the same” in large cities as in less populated municipalities, she points out, although “in the rural world there is less influence of global feminist action.” The explanation is clear: in the towns “there are fewer women of working age because in general they are over 65 years of age and have developed a career at a time when the claims in their favor were not so widespread or strengthened.” Therefore, it is a scenario where women “do not have the same knowledge of inequalities”, which has led to the deactivation of “the ability to influence citizens when it comes to changing things with respect to large cities.”
Added to this low awareness, there are other factors that widen the gaps both in terms of citizenship in general and gender. “Access to many basic services is more difficult, such as university education, road communications, health services, public transport, or quality Internet connection”, denounces Alises Valdelomar, precisely from a region with many areas shade on mobile covers.
“They are handicaps for many people when it comes to being able to telework from these centers,” especially women, who are the main agents of traction and population fixation in the towns. “Women are the ones who have the capacity to bear children and bring children into the world,” recalls the doctor, a key phenomenon “to develop a personal and professional project in the emptied territories.” In addition to upbringing, mothers become in a generalized way “energizers for the existence of schools or educational systems if there are none, or other resources for their children”, in the face of a lesser awareness of men. For this reason, Alises asks for more awareness among men to participate in child-rearing and other domestic tasks. “It takes a gender deconstruction of young people, he maintains, to have sensitivity in the education of their children and to be co-responsible in the care.” “If a baby is raised with a bottle, the father can also take care of him,” he points out.
Gender perspective
Personally, feminism “has taught me to look at things with a gender perspective”, a vision that “has opened up a whole world of discoveries regarding inequalities between women and men”.
It is a concern that she has also transmitted to her status as a member of the cooperative ‘El Progreso’, after inheriting some shares in this agricultural company. Her commitment to equality has prompted her to demand a greater presence of women in the management bodies of the wine-producing entity and to join the Equality Commission of Castilla-La Mancha Agrifood Cooperatives. It is a stimulus that also led her to initiate a research work on different profiles of women from Villarrubia, which she later collected in the book ‘Pioneers of the 20th century in a place in La Mancha’.
Personal activism
Alises’s activism came into her life after a process of self-awareness and reflection. Apart from the gender asymmetries manifested in a “more scandalous, flagrant and harmful way, such as sexist violence”, it was the “more subtle and imperceptible” anomalies that made him actuate the spring of his claim. “He did not know them and did not identify them as such”, although in the absence of logical explanations, his restless universe was warning him that they were “strange, shocking and disturbing” irregularities.
With that self-awareness, Alises Valdelomar has understood the existence of “the wage gap, the sexist use of language, the feminization of poverty or the transnational current of care”, that is, “of people, especially women, who come from the third to the first world to take care of dependent people ”.
They are normalized phenomena, along with others more alarming and execrable such as violence or prostitution, which, in his opinion, require a social review (in addition to the legal one), through people committed and willing to fight against these arbitrariness that restrain the personal and professional development of millions of girls and women in the world.
They have developed the international campaign ‘Not one petal less’ / Lanza
Village Feminists: Not a Petal Less
This understanding led her to join the Feministas de Pueblo association in Castilla-La Mancha. It is a movement of women who live and work in rural areas to carry the flame of feminism there and thus alleviate the deficiencies in training and dynamization. “There are many people in the rural world of the region, explains the activist Villarrubiera, who is very involved in feminism, but it is a large and dispersed territory where the commitment remains in isolated islets, and for that reason it has been necessary to form the network to reinforce that bond and bring together more people ”.
Since its inception in early 2020, the association has worked to guarantee the rights of rural women, often invisible and with consequences in the form of sexist violence, and its components develop a calendar of protest actions, as is the case of # 25N .
For this edition, the feminist entity has collaborated in the international campaign ‘Not a Petal Less’, a novel and exciting initiative that is touring the hands and peoples of the region. Organized by the Regional Feminist Network of Castilla-La Mancha, it consisted of “crocheting purple roses to which we have attached a card with the hashtag #rosesagainstviolences”, to condemn the multiple forms of violence against women.
They will be exhibited in visible spaces in towns and cities of the autonomous community such as Las Pedroñeras, Almansa, Caudete, Orgaz, Sonseca, Ciudad Real, Villarrubia de los Ojos, Puertollano, Miguelturra, Almagro and Cuenca.
Regarding the phenomenon of gender violence and its detection when she works as a rural doctor, Alises Valdelomar explains that in her current position in the mobile ICU “it is very difficult”, because they are only with the patients for a few minutes for an emergency matter, if Well, “at least the intuition” of possible cases in primary care or hospitals is more common. There are suspicions, he clarifies, when patients have recurrent symptoms of anxiety, depression, back pain, headaches, blood pressure that are not compensated.
‘Pioneers of the 20th century in a place in La Mancha’
Alises Valdelomar’s (1959) commitment to feminism is vital and has made it a practical element, black on white.
The doctor and member of an agricultural cooperative wrote a year ago ‘Pioneers of the 20th century in a place in La Mancha’, the result of a long investigation on the role of women over a century in Villarrubia de los Ojos. “It speaks of many profiles, such as the women who conquered traditionally masculinized lands”, an advance “especially worthy if we take into account the position of confinement to the domestic sphere of women until after the Franco dictatorship.”
The writer wanted to value the legacy of those “who paved the way for those who came behind”, but also those who “were victims of gender violence” or those “retaliated after the Civil War.” In particular, it dedicates a space, as it emphasizes, to the “shaven women who walked down the street with the sign of ‘Por puta y roja'”.
Through inquiries in the minutes of the municipal archives, of the Ciudad Real Provincial Council, in the digital historical press, in the Castilla La Mancha library, in addition to the first-person testimonies or direct relatives of the protagonists, Alises Valdelomar has also rescued “those educating philanthropists of the middle or upper class, who gave free classes to the girls who served in their homes.” For most of the 20th century, “most of the population thought that girls did not have to know how to read and write and that they did not need to go to school,” she laments.
Likewise, “I speak of the spinners, healers, of those who worked in the fields and with what they earned, because the husband was in the war or they were widows, they set up their business, of the artists, of the first university students, of those who they participated in politics and in rearguard organizations in the war, because in my town there was no front, ”he says.
From the point of view of discrimination against women and their remission towards personal projects despite everything, the writer addresses female names and characters in each decade that are an example of courage.
The book was presented on Book Day, April 23, and for 2022, Valdelomar intends to take it to other municipalities and entities. He celebrates that, as a starting point, in his town “he has had a great reception from all over the world.”
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