Have we been victims of moral aggression at work? Have we been incapable of reacting to a progressive attack by someone for whom we have deep feelings that create barriers to seeing what is really going on? Are we incapable of saying no or are we simply so entrapped in a situation of aggression that we see no way out?

Women empathise immediately whenever another woman shares a situation of moral or physical aggression, for the worst reasons: because there isn’t a single woman in the world who can’t identify similar situations in her life, who has lived with the same loneliness, guilt, sense of powerlessness and helplessness, not least because few tools exist to make us feel truly protected in extreme situations.

Being a victim of moral or physical aggression happens in all spheres of our lives and, in all these contexts, despite the years and years we have invested as a society in an egalitarian vision between men and women, we are often unable to fight against the weight of centuries of patriarchy that swallows us up again and again.

Differences in education? Differences in the expectations that are created around one gender and another? Models that are reproduced and that seem to be stronger than anything any of us can do to change this ever-present vulnerability, in which the feeling of insecurity invades and immobilises us.

The prevention of violence against women should happen from the first breath of any human being born on this planet and only public schools can create the space for the immensity of the work that needs to be done in this field.

A school that addresses this issue across the board, whether in history, mathematics or religion and morals classes, a school that has a vision of a democratic and peaceful society, in which men and women are first and foremost people with rights, duties and equal mutual respect, in which the fear of aggression no longer dictates the way women act, always anticipating all the threats that may exist or, when they don’t anticipate, feeling that it is already too late, already in the middle of the aggression.

And liberation from violence also begins by: speaking out, sharing, denouncing, speaking out again, until the respect and dignity to which we are all entitled is established among everyone.

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