Argentina (National University of La Plata) “Micaela Law”: the Second Edition of the Gender Training for UNLP Authorities Began

 The National University of La Plata began today the second edition of the institutional training sessions of the “Micaela Law”. In this case, it will be aimed at higher authorities and management teams of the Presidency of the UNLP and each of the 17 Faculties and Undergraduate Colleges.

The president of the National University of La Plata, Martín López Armengol, together with the Institutional Vice President of the UNLP, Andrea Varela and Secretary of Human Rights and Equality Policies, Verónica Cruz, participated in the launch of the activity organized by the university platense.

The training section is part of compliance with Law 27,499/2019, called “Micaela Law”. This regulation establishes the obligatory nature of training on the subject of gender and gender-based violence for all the people who make up the three powers of the National State – Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

It is important to note that the UNLP has been implementing it since 2019, being one of the first universities to make it effective and that, after the assembly process that marked the beginning of a new administration, where there was a renewal of authorities, the UNLP considered it necessary to strengthen this ongoing training process to strengthen the construction of a university that promotes the recognition, expansion and protection of rights from the daily management of its policies.

In this context, López Armengol affirmed that “it is necessary to do this type of training again, because the problems change and are far from being resolved. That is why it is necessary to continue insisting on policies and concrete actions aimed at avoiding gender violence; as well as consciously addressing everything related to the Micaela Law”.

“For the UNLP, training from a gender perspective is strategic, they are spaces that make a better university, a university with social responsibility.

From the Secretariat of Human Rights and Policies of Equality, they detailed that the training forms a powerful device to transmit tools and (de)construct common senses that question inequality and discrimination, transforming our ways of thinking, feeling and acting.

This first day of training was attended by the Undersecretaries of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, Laurana Malacalza and Diana Broggi, and Sandra Torlucci, Rector of the UNA, Coordinator of the RUGE CIN Network.

Franco Bartolacci, Rector of the UNR will be present at the second meeting together with Alba Rueda, Special Representative on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship. And in the third meeting we will have the participation of Eleonor Faur, research professor and Gabriela Diker, former Rector of the UNGS.

Continuous training aims to accompany this process of problematizing practices and discourses that reproduce gender-based violence and have a negative impact on the biographies and educational and labor trajectories of women and dissidents. And in this sense, the Micaela Law constitutes a challenge for the university system as a whole and for our University in particular, by giving us the possibility of producing knowledge and intervention tools against the violence -often naturalized- of the patriarchal culture.

In 2019, Néstor García (father of Micaela García, a university student who was the victim of a femicide), and Drs Ana María Fernández, Diana Maffía and Dora Barrancos participated as exhibitors.

The activity is organized by the Secretariat for Human Rights and Equality Policies through the Directorate for Feminist Policies and the Directorate for Gender and Sexual Diversity Policies.