About thirty magistrates will be in charge of helping and assisting other colleagues in technical questions about prosecution with a gender perspective, among other points. This concept, in short, involves judging by leaving aside stereotypes and prejudices, as well as analyzing the context in which the facts take place, in order to be able to interpret the legislation in a correct way.
This was decided last week by the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ), which agreed to create a Network of Equality Specialists. The members of this network will be available to members of the judicial career who request it “to provide them with the technical assistance they deem appropriate in matters directly related to equal access to justice and prosecution with gender perspective”.
Also for everything that has to do with equal opportunities and issues related to conciliation in workplaces, according to CGPJ sources. And it will also be the responsibility of the members of this network to help “promote the use of inclusive language in judicial resolutions and in governmental or administrative communications from the CGPJ or the various governing bodies of the Judiciary”, they point out.
The proposal for the creation of this network of experts was presented by the Equality Commission, which is chaired by Clara Martínez de Careaga, and which also includes members Nuria Díaz Abad and Juan Manuel Fernández Martínez.
In the opinion of the Judiciary, “the extensive legal heritage of modern anti-discrimination law, both nationally and internationally, requires a high level of specialization and training, and the correct application is an important challenge for the Justice”, he points out .
The Network of Equality Specialists will be made up of thirty magistrates and full-time magistrates from the various jurisdictional orders who can certify a specialization in matters of equality, anti-discrimination law and prosecution with a gender perspective.
The selection of these magistrates will correspond to the plenum of the CGPJ, which will appoint them through a selective procedure based on the principles of publicity, equality, merit and capacity.
According to the calendar drawn up by the Equality Commission, the members of the Network of Equality Specialists could be appointed at the end of June and the first meeting could be in September at the headquarters of the Judicial Documentation Center (Cendoj) in Sant Sebastià.
Among other functions, the members of this network will collect, mark and send to this center the resolutions that are of interest in matters of equality, conciliation and prosecution with perspective and will propose training activities in equal treatment and non-discrimination, perspective of gender and co-responsibility for inclusion in the training plan of the Judicial School.
The first sentence to which the gender perspective was applied was handed down in 2017 by the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, headed by Gloria Poyatos. A year later, the Supreme Court did the same, in a case of attempted murder and abuse of a man against his partner. The speaker was magistrate Vicente Magro, expert in gender violence.
