“Men and women have different roles in the family. For example, the man is responsible for providing for the family’s expenses, while the woman is responsible for taking care of the children. This does not imply superiority. They are different merits.”
I remembered these words from the supreme leader of Iran (the chief cleric of that theocracy), Ali Khamenei, when, this Saturday afternoon, I watched a debate on SIC-N on “the role of women in society in 2025”.
I confess, I was unaware of the existence of a debate along these lines in Portuguese society — at least for a few (long) years now. But, I learned, there are some girls who do stories on social media talking about the harm of feminism, this fearful movement defending equality between women and men about which, I also learned, a young deputy from the far-right party had somewhere certified that she did less for women (besides, of course, ensuring that she could have a public voice and be elected to the Assembly of the Republic) than the iron.
Adding to this Cristiano Ronaldo’s statements, in a recent interview, in which, in addition to praising Donald Trump, he said about the woman he lives with (Georgina Rodriguez) that she “takes care of me, which is very important, the family, the house, which involves a lot of work” and that “if it were the opposite, I wouldn’t be able to do it; men are not capable, honestly”, someone in the channel’s information department thought it was “cool” to invite four women to “discuss” this “topic”.
And what was the theme, again? According to the pivot and two of the guests, one of those girls who do stories about how terrible feminism is, it would be “a new movement”, that of “traditional women”, who defend the right of women to decide to “stay at home”.
Staying at home means, if I understood correctly, not participating in the job market and not providing for yourself and any dependents. Once again, I have to confess my ignorance: I was unaware that there was any kind of impediment, legal or otherwise, to anyone who wants to and can “stay at home”, be it a woman or a man, “stay at home”. Maybe, I guess, people in general work, even if sometimes they don’t feel like it, because money doesn’t fall from trees and they need it to live — but, according to those girls in the storieswhat really complicates the choice is “feminism” and “feminists”. How exactly feminism and feminists do this is what they have failed to explain — given that, claimed one of them, “public policies that effectively protect women who choose to stay at home” are needed.
Naturally, in a country whose Constitution enshrines equal rights for all citizens, such public policies, if they existed, would have to cover anyone who wanted to “stay at home” — regardless of gender. And what would be understood as “staying at home”? Would it be necessary, for example, to have children to look after? And in this case, would one be enough or would there be a minimum number? And could the person who stayed at home to take care of their children have public support if they hired employees, or did they have to do everything? For example, could you put the children in daycare and go, as one of the SIC-N guests exemplified, to Pilates (or coffee) afterwards?
But I digress. Let’s go back to the idea that the “traditional women” movement is new. Now, I have news: there have always been women arguing that women’s place is “at home”. Nothing new about this, quite the opposite. There have always been women advocating submission to men; There have always been women extolling the idea that it is up to them to command and “provide” and “protect” and that it is up to them to obey and be protected.
In fact, as can be seen in Khamenei’s country, for example, there are even women who walk the streets making sure that other women do not violate the gender inequality laws that apply in the country. The laws that force women to walk covered in the street (in Iran, with loose clothing and a scarf to hide their hair; in the hell that is Afghanistan, burqa and without even being able to move around without an escort from a man in the family) because, precisely, their place is at home — being the public space of men and, for this reason, they run enormous risks if they venture into it without the protection of what the imams call “modest clothing”.
What is new, relatively new, as Khamenei pointed out in a series of tweets in December 2024, in which he laments the destruction that feminism has caused in the Western world, is women’s freedom.
It means that women have — at least in law — the same rights as men; is being able to have access to all professions (remember that in Portugal, until 1974, there were several professions prohibited to women, starting with the judiciary); is not being created to be created.
In fact, it is to compare what Khamenei writes in 2024 with what Salazar said almost 100 years earlier: “In countries or places where married women compete with men’s work — in factories, workshops, offices, liberal professions — the institution of the family, for which we fight as the cornerstone of a well-organized society, threatens ruin… Let us, therefore, leave the man fighting with his life outside, on the street… And the woman defending it, carrying it in her arms, inside the house…”
I repeat: what is new, relatively new — in Portugal only a few decades old — is to register as unacceptable that, despite legal equality, women continue, in our society as in all Western societies, to receive less, for the same work, than men, and to bear, in general, a much greater portion of the burden related to caring for children and the common home.
What is new is that women continue to be disproportionately victims of sexual violence and domestic violence, and that This victimization is closely related to socially and culturally rooted notions about what a man is and what a woman is and what each person can and cannot do, should or should not do — in other words, about what is called gender stereotypes..
And that’s what it’s about, gender stereotypes, those ideas that continue to kill women, here and around the world, when a television channel organizes a debate on “the role of women in society in 2025” around the idea that “women should be able to stay at home”. Because, obviously, what is presupposed in the question is that if anyone can, or should, “stay at home”, that someone will have to be the woman, because, as one of the girls said, she “is more predisposed to care” and, as Ronaldo assures, “men are not capable, honestly”.
This in the same country where two or three weeks ago the far right of ironing was proposing a ban on burqas e niqabs claiming the defense of gender equality. Honestly, Khamenei and Khamenei could go there.