Women writing to women
There are some powerful women in the music industry that have created songs to transmit this power to other women that might need it. Some of these artists are Beyoncé, Lizzo or Lady Gaga, among many others. Their songs have helped many people.
Beyocé´s “Run the World (Girls)”
The most important pop singer of the century, released in 2011 in her 4th album named “4” a song that shows the women´s power. By the line “Who run the world? (Girls)”, she encourages women to get up and start making a difference in their lives and making them visible as strong and confident women. In the music video, which has nearly 500 million views on YouTube, a huge number of women appear dancing next to this Queen B, as her fans know her. This represents that by gathering up, all of us create a huge amount of power to be listened to.
Source: Google photos
Beyoncé on the cover of "Run the world (Girls)"
This song was also performed by Nia Correia at a spanish TV show called “Operación Triunfo” in 2020 and at the moment has nearly 3.500.000 views on YouTube, which is a huge number for the program itself. When preparing the song, she knew that it was a huge feminist hymn and that she had to show the power and strenght which has been comented above, which she achieved. Because of this, Correia has received multiple acknowledgement comments and will always be remained for this performance.
Lizzo´s “Good as Hell”
Although this american singer and rapper has been recently discovered by the world, she has already been nominated to eight Grammy Awards this year and won three of them. Her song "Truth Hurts" (2017) went viral due to a Netflix show which included it during an emotional scene for the character and everyone liked it. The song first mentioned, was created and published in 2016, but in this year, Lizzo wasn't recognized yet, she had to wait one year for it to happen. But “Good as Hell” has been featured by Ariana Grande in 2019, and it is when this song became so popular. This talks about how a woman can get the will power she needs to live her life and kick out a guy who doesn't love her anymore. Lizzo gives her the strength she needs.
Source: Google photos
Lizzo on the music video of "Good as Hell"
Also, “Good as Hell” was adapted in the spanish programm mentioned above, “Operación Triunfo”, by Nia Correia and Ariadna Tortosa which opened their path on the programm.
Lady Gaga´s “Born this way”
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga, is a New Yorker singer, composer, producer, dancer, actress and many others, who created this song in the year 2011 included in her second album “Born this way”.
The single´s lyrics sums up the topic of the whole album, values of identity. It gives strength to those who need it; not just the women who are enduring a personal issue, but to everyone that can't be themselves. This song encourages everyone to be who they are without caring what others say: “I´m beautiful in my way ´Cause God makes no mistakes I´m on the right track, baby I was born this way”. But, to be honest, most of Lady Gaga's songs are related to this same topic, as she has lived it in her flesh and doesn't want people to feel that way. She has achieved a lot of good things by her songs.
Source: Google photos
Lady Gaga on the cover of "Born this way"
In addition, this song was also performed in “Operación Triunfo” in the year 2018 by Julia Medina, the performance has more than 900.000 views on YouTube and the singer was nervous of doing it because she knew the impact that this song has on a generation and because it is a way of showing how everyone wants to be; it was a big responsibility for her to do that.
There are many other songs and artists that create projects related to their female power. At the end they represent a group of people who have suffered or are suffering what their songs talk about.
“Gender equality in football”
Sportswomen continue earning much less money than sportsmen although they spend the same time working on the same.
In spite of all advances that happened in the last decades,differences between sportsmen and sportswomen have not disappeared at all.
We can see this clearly in the last Forbes list about the top-100 highest paid athletes in the world last year, where there are only two women between all of them, the tennis players Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams.
Football leads the list as the most unequal sport. With nearly 140,000 professional footballers, only 1287 of them are women, according to the last Global Sports Salaries Survey. This means that there are much more women playing football in bad conditions and without receiving the minimum salary.
In Spain, they are trying to solve this issue and the Spanish sports council´s president, Irene Lozano, has announced that La Liga Iberdrola will be professional for the next season 2021-2022. This has been claimed by the footballers association since last year and it will be a big step for the women's football league.
Source:Google photos
Alex Morgan with the Ballon d’Or and the Golden Shoe.
This means that women will have the right to take pregnancy leave and they will be able to dedicate themselves to football in a professional way, without working in another job.
Last year,according to “Forbes” magazine, the world's best paid women were Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, who led the EEUU team to win the last World Cup played in France. However, they only receive around 4,6 million € per year and that is a very poor quantity compared to men's salaries. Men footballers with the best salaries are Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who earn 131 and 118 million € per year, according to “France Football”, so there is a too big difference in that sense.
Another reason for these differences are the sponsorships. Nowadays, there are few companies who want to sponsor women and that is a big problem,because these promotions are one of the things that generates more money in sports. So, another great improvement for the women´s spanish football league is the deal they signed in 2019 with Iberdrola until 2025 to put their name for the league.
Last week, there was more great news to reach equality between genders. For the first time in all history, a woman was the referee in a Uefa Europa League match. The french referee Stéphanie Frappart made history last 22nd october in the match played between english Leicester City and ukrainian Zorya Luhansk.
Football as everything in this life is changing every day, so in the next future, there will probably be more advances in this way. For the moment, women must “Keep working, even when no one is watching.” as Alex Morgan said.
A reflection of society
Last October, the series directed by "Los Javis" about the life of Cristina Ortiz "La Veneno", based on Cristina's own biography "Digo, ni puta ni santa", written and edited by her friend Valeria Vegas, ended. A very tough series that relates all the problems Cristina faced throughout her life for being who she was, and leaves us with a few messages to make us reflect.
"Veneno," as the series is called, has changed history forever. One of the reasons why this biopic shows a reality beyond fiction is the gender self-determination. Cristina says that at the time she was not considered a woman on a legal level because she was not operated on for vaginoplasty. When she made the mistakes she did, she was put in a men's prison instead of a women's prison, which is where she should have been. She was raped every day she was in prison. That caused her stress, depression and anxiety disorders that would last her a lifetime. Some actresses in the series, such as Daniela Santiago or Isabel Torres, have said that in order to be considered women legally, a coroner had to inspect them to make sure they had a vagina.
Today, in order to change your name and gender on your ID card, trans people have to go through a two-year hormonal process and pass psychological and psychiatric tests. These are measures that violate human rights. Not all trans people want to be hormoned, and unless they do, they are not considered women for legal purposes, processes that go against people's freedom.
Another point that the series emphasizes is that trans women are indeed victims of gender-based violence. Many people today still say that it is impossible for trans women to suffer gender-based violence and that they cannot suffer the same oppression as cis women. Throughout her life, Cristina felt rejected by the people around her, especially by her family. This led her to fall in love with someone who beat and abused her. In the series, when she talks to her friend Fanny, she tells her that a man who sleeps with her at night and hasn't run away in the morning, can't be let go, which is the most they can aspire to.
Because of the rejection and abuse that trans people suffer in their environment, they believe that receiving the same thing throughout their lives is the only thing they can reach. This is why it is so important that we LGBT people support each other, so that none of us feel what Cristina and Fanny felt.
But one of the strongest points of the series, which is a clear reflection of society, is the social and labor exclusion of trans people. In the series, when Cristina starts to grow her hair long and get hormonal, things start to change in the hospital where she worked. Patients would yell at her and scold her, and they didn't want her to take care of them anymore. They looked at her strangely, as if that wasn't her place, just because she was starting to show signs of being a trans woman, just because she was the way she really was.
Today, the unemployment rate of trans people is 80%, with an average lifespan of only 50 years. People who don't want to see this data are hiding behind the fact that there is no work for them, although the series has shown us the opposite. A very wide range of trans people both in front of the camera and behind it. So there is work for them, they just don't get the chance to show it.
That is why historically trans women have engaged in prostitution, because they were not given the job opportunities they deserved. Cristina in the series has no choice but to practice prostitution in order to survive. In order to be like she really was, to be able to pay for treatment, and to be able to pay for an apartment, she had to prostitute herself.
"Veneno" is a series that dignifies trans women, and offers their point of view and their reality, without falling into the typical image of a stereotyped trans woman. It is a song to the freedom of people. The message of the series is that the time to do something is now, not when they are already dead. In general it is a series of sorority, something that until now had never been seen on television.