Feminism or regression: the great Andalusian decision

Andalucía reaches these elections with a fundamental question that runs through all debates: what model of autonomous community do we want to be? Because behind every electoral promise there is an idea of society and if the programs of the political organizations that aspire to govern in Andalusia show anything, it is that equality is not measured by campaign slogans. It is measured by budgets, by public services, by resources that arrive on time and by decisions that allow, or prevent, women from exercising their rights.

And if these years of government by the PP in Andalusia, accompanied first by Vox and later conditioned by its ideological framework, have demonstrated anything, it is that women's rights can regress without the need to formally repeal them. It is enough to empty them of budget, delay their application, privatize their access, or eliminate the mechanisms that allow for scrutiny of whether a public policy reduces or increases inequality.

The clearest example is the right to abortion. Andalusia has not prohibited it, but has kept it practically outside of public healthcare. In 2024, according to data from the Ministry of Health, only 0.03% of voluntary interruptions of pregnancy in Andalusia were carried out in public centers; in other words, 99.97% were referred to private centers.

That data is not an anecdote, it is a form of inequality. Because a right that depends on private agreements, on travel, on the province where you live, or on a woman's ability to overcome administrative and territorial obstacles, is not a fully guaranteed right. The PP has not repealed the right to abortion; it has done something more silent, letting public healthcare not assume it as a normalized, accessible, and dignified service.

There are two clearly opposed models, that of those who understand public services and equality as democratic pillars and that of those who consider them an expendable expense or a cultural battle.

Every electoral campaign we hear the right talk about "real equality", "reconciliation", "freedom" or "support for families". But when one looks at the electoral programs and, above all, when one analyzes what has happened in Andalusia in recent years, the question is inevitable: what have the PP and Vox really done for Andalusian women?

Something as simple as cutting budgets and the institutional architecture of equality. In 2024, a cut of 5 million euros to the Andalusian Institute for Women was denounced, in addition to the high dependence on earmarked and external funds and the weight of outsourcing in its budget. And when equality resources depend too much on external funds, unstable calls, or outsourced services, what is weakened is the public capacity to sustain feminist policies with continuity, professionalism, and closeness.

To that is added another especially serious fact, the Andalusian Council for Women's Participation denounced in 2024 an "unprecedented serious cut" in the Andalusian Equality Law, warning that mechanisms for scrutinizing the gender impact of regional budgets were being eliminated. In other words, the tools that allow us to know whether public money corrects inequalities or reproduces them were being weakened.

This may seem technical, but it is profoundly political. Removing gender impact assessments from budgets is like taking away the purple glasses from the administration. It prevents us from seeing if a housing, employment, health, education, or transport policy affects men and women equally. And without diagnosis, there is no real equality, only propaganda.

That is why we cannot separate equality and public services. When public healthcare deteriorates, women's rights regress. When benefits are privatized, equality regresses. When there are insufficient resources in dependency, home help, primary care, mental health, public education, or violence prevention, those who end up filling the gaps in the system are usually women: mothers, daughters, grandmothers, precarious workers, and invisible caregivers.

The breast cancer screening scandal showed precisely that, that cuts, mismanagement, and the deterioration of public healthcare are not abstract debates. They have substance, they have a face, and they have consequences on women's lives. When a screening fails, it's not a procedure that fails, it's a public network that should have protected lives that fails. In 2025, thousands of people took to the streets in Andalusia against Moreno Bonilla's healthcare management, in a protest that transcended the specific case of the screenings and pointed to a deeper problem of public healthcare deterioration.

And while all this was happening, Vox has been setting the political climate. Denying sexist violence as a structural phenomenon, attacking LGTBIQA+ policies, questioning affective-sexual education and turning feminism into a cultural enemy. The problem is not just what Vox says. The problem is that the PP has normalized part of that framework, has lowered institutional language, has assumed ambiguities and has allowed equality to go from being a state policy to becoming a bargaining chip.

Equality appears integrated into all public policies, understood not as a complement, but as an essential condition for social justice

Faced with that model, progressive programs place equality and public services as two sides of the same democracy, although with singularities.

Por Andalucía proposes a transversal and feminist commitment with the objective of reinforcing women's support centers, safeguarding coeducation, expanding resources against sexist violence, developing specific policies for rural, migrant, and young women, and consolidating LGTBIQA+ rights. Equality is integrated into all public policies, understood not as a supplement, but as an essential condition for social justice.

Likewise, the PSOE maintains an explicit defense of feminist and equality policies, with proposals linked to female employment, work-life balance, affective-sexual education, or institutional reinforcement of the system for attending to victims of sexist violence. However, many of its proposals appear formulated from a more institutional and management logic, less oriented towards transforming the economic and social structures that generate inequality.

The Andalusian PP, for its part, uses much more ambiguous language. It speaks of "equality of opportunity," "family," and "work-life balance," but avoids strong references to feminism as a political driver. Gender-based violence loses discursive centrality and the focus shifts to generic family policies. After years of government by Moreno Bonilla, moreover, reality has shown a growing outsourcing of services, cuts in prevention, and permanent conflicts with public service professionals linked to equality and dependency.

And then there is Vox, whose program directly represents a challenge to decades of democratic progress. It denies gender violence as a structural phenomenon, proposes eliminating equality bodies, rejects LGTBIQA+ policies and turns feminist rights into a supposed “ideology”. Its proposal is not to reform equality policies: it is to dismantle them.

The fundamental difference is clear. There are those who understand equality as a pillar of government and those who reduce it to an uncomfortable section of the program. There are those who defend public services as a guarantee of rights and those who turn them into a business or let them deteriorate. There are those who know that sexist violence, abortion, dependency, public healthcare, or budgets with a gender perspective are part of the same democratic battle. And there are those who prefer to look the other way so as not to offend the far right.

Therefore, the question is not only what PP and Vox promise now. The question is what they have done these years when they have had power. And the answer is the most absolute regression in relation to equality policies. Because, although the regression does not always come with big headlines, sometimes it comes in the form of delay, of budget that is not executed, of a right that exists in the BOJA but not in your health center, of an impact report that disappears or of a public service that is outsourced. And precisely because of that, it must be named.

Because Andalusia cannot afford four more years of watered-down equality, weakened public services, and feminist rights subjected to the noise of Vox. Andalusian women do not need paternalism or propaganda. They need guaranteed rights, public resources, brave institutions, and a democracy that does not retreat every time the far-right raises its voice.

That is why these elections are not just a partisan dispute. They are a decision about the daily lives of millions of Andalusians. About whether a woman will have public resources when she suffers sexist violence, whether a family will be able to access a medical appointment in dignified conditions or in an Andalusia where rights depend on the postal code and income level.

When feminist policies are questioned, democracy retreats

The right and the far-right try to present equality as an excess and public services as an efficiency problem. But experience shows the exact opposite, when the public is weakened, inequalities increase. And when feminist policies are questioned, democracy regresses.

Andalusia has today the opportunity to choose on May 17 between resigning itself to deterioration or betting on a community that cares for, protects, and guarantees rights. Because equality and public services are not an ideological luxury. They are the line that separates a strong democracy from an increasingly unequal society. Because women's rights are never irreversible. And history shows that when the right and the far-right advance, equality retreats. And Andalusia has already begun to suffer that setback.