You've been fighting a lot. How has your character become committed and combative?

In the first house. All the women of our time had the rage to be freer: we didn’t want to be so responsible, we wanted the right to be more irresponsible and wicked and mischievous! Besides, I was the eldest of seven brothers... I was not willing to accept “what touched me”, to give what would be expected of me. We could not do anything without the consent of a man (father or husband). But I would say that the foundation of my training was given at the University of Sarria, when I was studying economic sciences. In the speeches of the thinker Carlos Castilla del Pino and lawyers like Lidia Falcón... Then I joined the Assembly of Women of Bizkaia, where militancy and training went hand in hand in the struggles for the right to abortion, for the right to divorce... Since then, I have participated in many women’s groups with the intention of continuing to train.

How much does it cost to fight from a young age?

The women of our generation were forced to learn that we were educated to have a second sex or, what’s worse, to be like men, one of them. And if we don't pay attention, we can do a lot of damage to ourselves. We are very committed, very strong, strong, combative, firm... But that comes at a price: having to be like that doesn’t let you see a lot of things. Sometimes I find it strange to think that I have been able to love someone, to have warm relationships, because we were either addicts or hard as stones. We have been very “brute”, pure savages. Thank you for working in a team and sharing your feelings within the team. We knew that we didn’t want the one that had touched us, and that put us against it, against everything until then. But to resist we had to build a new society, creativity was necessary, and for this the team was essential.

Which team did you join?

First in the Women’s Assembly of Bizkaia, then in the Committee of Internationalist Concessions, then in the seminar “women and development” on the Sahara organized by Sudak... More than 15 years have passed since then, but it was a very enriching experience. In this seminar we met with women from NGOs where feminist women had just emerged, and we managed to combine feminism and cooperation. There were some very interesting discussions. We discussed the texts of feminist women in South America: From Marcela Lagarde, The love of Clara Coria is not as we are told... From there we went to work on the gender committee of the NGOs, the women’s committees of the unions, the Women’s Assembly of Bizkaia, others to the South... But we learned a lot from each other, we all had a broad feminist culture and each one applied it later in their field. At that time we learned, for example, that being a lesbian, self-proclaiming a lesbian was a political choice, and in the fight against heteropatriarchy, all feminists began to say that we were lesbians. Just like with abortion. In the fight for the right to abortion we all said “I too have aborted”, those who had abortions and those who did not: we had to fight together and together and we had it very clear.

Struggle, commitment, solidarity, cooperation, freedom... How did these words get into your vocabulary?

When I was 16 years old, I started to train politically. At that time we were all united against Franco, and each student movement taught us one thing: We received seminars on the history of the Basque Country, on leftism and communism, on nationality... At the time of the Giras studying economic sciences, it was the breeding ground of the Sarri rebels. For the first time, the police entered our school in 1967. Until then it was forbidden to enter universities, and first it was our faculty. And my parents forced me to leave Sarri, ordering me to start working as a housewife or to start learning something else that had nothing to do with economic science. I read the first feminist book: Four essays about the woman by Carlos Castilla del Pino. There was nothing else about women. A few years ago I began to recover the literature of all those women who were supposed to be our referents, all those women who unfortunately were silenced. All those Republican women who denied us, disappeared. This denial forced us to start from scratch, and it was the most painful and fun thing of our generation. We had to start from scratch, invent everything, from the unions to all the social structures. Since we were denied transmission, we did what we wanted.

What is feminism to you?

For me, feminism means not giving up anything. Don’t have to choose if I want to be a mother, wife, employee, friend or lover. I want the right to have everything, to have nothing to give up to achieve anything else, and to be able to make free choices. Feminism has given me the strength to fight for it, and the best thing about this struggle is that what you have achieved through your own efforts cannot be taken away from you. No one can take away our experiences, our friends, our loves... And that's big. I have made a great effort to be a “bad mother”, for example, because in the Basque Country it is very healthy to be a “bad mother”. Here the mothers are to blame for everything, and no one will be able to take away from me all that has been given to me by the fact that I was freed from it by my own efforts. I encourage you to be wonderful bad mothers!

What were the first steps in feminism?

The first steps were as lawyers. We profited from the rage that arose inside us when the feminist consciousness awoke and the desire to change everything to start changing the legislation. Then there were the struggles for the right to abortion, for divorce... In the meantime, we read all the classics about sexual relations, in addition to the political ones. I don’t know how many books I read between the ages of 16 and 18.

When did you decide to start teaching?

The students with science training sent us to night classes from Sarria. There were red priests in the evening classes and left-handed students called us to teach mathematics and physics. It was my first take with education and when I was forced to leave the economy at home I decided to become a teacher. I started working and I really think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. On the one hand, I found it very easy to empathize with teenagers between the ages of 12 and 16, perhaps because I had younger brothers or because my mother and grandmother were also teachers. I’ve always remembered a phrase they said: “Students are taught, if possible, and if not, they are loved.” Or the other one: “Students don’t forgive two things: passivity and boredom. As long as you keep them in mind and don’t get bored, you can do whatever you want.”

Do you have a lot of faith in teaching?

The big one. I always believed that what I had to teach students was important. We celebrated the marked dates, March 8, May 1... On feminism, the struggle of the workers, solidarity, leftist equality, etc. I spoke to them, but also mathematics, physics and chemistry, laboratory, technology, etc. I also taught them, and since I thought all this was important, I enjoyed teaching them, I had fun, because I tried to figure out what was the most fun way to teach everything. And students are very grateful when you try to teach them things in the most accurate, clear, and engaging way possible. I have very good memories of the office. I enjoyed it very much. In addition, I have combined my entire teaching life with the education of my daughters, and this stage of education, both in schools and at home, has been very beautiful.

And when did you get the first shot with Saha?

In the first years of my career as a Juxtu teacher, my partner was sent to the Sahara and I went with him. It was the end of 1974 and we lived there until 1976. After fighting the Vietnam War and the massacre of the French in Algeria, it was very hard for me to live in a colony. In the Sahara I was mainly impressed by two things. On the one hand, they achieved the feeling and unity as a people, which the Frente POLISARIO had achieved. When we arrived they were Sakabanturi tribes, but they were not a people. But the Polisario Front brought them together and achieved things like the abolition of slavery throughout the Saharawi people. On the other hand, the woman was declared equal to the man. From the tribes the people were created, and in the early days of Frote the Polisario it was forbidden to proclaim oneself as a member of a tribe superior to the other tribes. It was a popular equality that sought to unite a people for the benefit of popular subsistence. It wasn’t exactly a leftist movement, but it was an anti-colonialist and unifying movement that tried to eliminate the elements that separated them and strengthen those that united them. As far as women were concerned, it was forbidden to reject their wives without any motive. Previously it was enough to say “I reject you” to leave my wife without any right. However, Saharawi women had two great rights: they could walk alone, without the help and consent of men; and on the other hand, they were with their wife ' s family during the previous days of marriage. That protected women a lot. And there is still almost no ill-treatment in the Sahara, and the good treatment of women is of great value, the ill-treatment is seen very badly.

When you returned from the Sahara, how did you find the Basque Country?

When I returned from the Sahara I went back to teach and we started having daughters and we looked at the Basque Country with different eyes. I saw some things that I didn’t like: in my time as a student we were all united against Franco, but by the time we returned I found thousands of separate groups. The battles for amnesty were the last beautiful battles we all fought together, but after the battles for amnesty each party pulled its side, and I was a little disappointed, with those partisanship. I’ve always had a hard time in the Basque conflict. It was at that time that the teachers founded the STEE-EILAS union, and we were also dealing with other issues besides education: the issue of abortion, the issue of nuclear power stations... that’s when I learned that life must have a price.

The price, the lives?

Just like in Japan. I find the phrase “life has no price” very funny, I always say: “of course life has a price, but let me negotiate.” Two euros? Two euros? Is my life worth two euros? Let’s negotiate our lives and see to what extent one type of energy or another, one social model or another deserves... But saying “life has no price” and not letting it negotiate is unacceptable. Let's at least be supportive enough to negotiate the prices of our lives. When we do any action, business, law... we should also include the health and life of people in costs, in budgets. It seems to me to be one of the most interesting contributions of ecology, which can be extended to different fields. But at a time when human life is being sold for free, and the life of the planet is not even being looked at... it seems to me that we are heading in a very dangerous direction.

Books are your best teachers. Has Lieratura educated you in feminism as well?

I have always been in or around the Women’s Assembly of Bizkaia, where I have been educated in feminism. In addition, I have books from women from all over the world and I have happily participated in workshops on literature and gender with very good teachers, such as Josune Muñoz. Now I also read a lot about feminism, I like to follow new trends and ideas, and now my daughter is passing me books. Lately I've been passing on Gender and Nation, for example, and a lot of queer books, because I lacked that part of the formation: Books by Judith Buttler, by Beatriz Preciado... I also finished the text yonki in the end... And King Kong Theory fascinated me. The Devenir perra by Itziar Ziga is also very good, it has an incredible strength and between the first books of theoretical basis sendo-sendoa.Nire and these, above all, I read philosophers: Celia Amoros, Amalia Valcarcel... Or the books of women from other cultures that have given me an incredible strength: Arabs, Africans, Chinese...

What’s the big deal in feminism right now?

The one about prostitution. And I say, why don't you ask them? Why don't you ask them what they want? Because maybe what they want is a union or something. Maybe they don't want to be put in convents or put all of them cleaning houses and taking care of old people. We can't treat them like objects. It is a shame for this society and for women that everything related to housework and care is not regulated, those who practice these practices are operating in very bad conditions: with incredibly low wages, without casualties, without protection, without retirement... And we are in the 21st century! There's a lot of fighting going on there, and we have to give it priority.

How has the development of feminism in the Basque Country been since your youth until today?

At first, the practice of feminism was very clear: we worked to achieve certain rights and to change the civil code. We all fought together for the rights of divorce and abortion, to change the civil code that made us dependent on our father or husband... That’s what we did, and then we started working on equality. This work is not yet finished. The first feminist days were beautiful. That’s where we went with feminists dressed in our jeans with short hair... and suddenly the Catalan feminists arrived. But what was that! At that time there was curly hair and Indian dresses in fashion, and so they came in and left us fascinated. I was impressed: they were feminists and beautiful! She could be beautiful and feminist. This caused me an internal revolution, for us to decorate and, let alone decorate for a man, were almost treason. I have always been very lazy and I still do not decorate myself much, but to free myself from these prejudices was great and I still thank those beautiful Catalan feminists. They had everything more beautiful than us: the dress, the hair, the smile... everything. It was around this time that we started working on coeducation and we created a lot of work sheets, but only feminist teachers put them into practice. It was then that the theories of dissent also came to us, and we understood that we should not be like men, but equal to them in rights. Until then we were obsessed with egalitarianism, and these discussions were painful in some cases. In addition, there were debates between a single militancy and a double militancy: many women, in addition to being feminists, belonged to some political party, some union... Those with multiple militancy were sometimes considered second-class feminists, which also caused a lot of harm.

Did you even discuss essentialism?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I am not a supporter of essentialism: I have never believed that women are good and wonderful simply because they are women. On the contrary, I have always maintained that women can be as cunning and vile as they please, and that this right is absolutely necessary to us. Women can be anything they want: bad, funny, cruel, sweet, violent... We can be all that men can be. The theory of essentialism does not help us at all! We must also have the right to be evil, the right to be military, the right to be slender and the right to be a whore. We have to have the right to be all good and all bad. And if we have behaved badly, let us be judged, as people, for the acts committed.

Then came debates about politics and women to decide whether or not women should organize themselves as political parties. What do you think?

The political terrain is important for the attainment of certain rights, but there were some reprisals at the time. Some of the women who wanted to dedicate themselves to politics were hungry for power, showed tremendous security in their minds, and wanted to make us see things as they saw them. To us they seemed like “reinones”. At the same time, for the first time feminism and the nationalist left movements were combined, and some women began to say that feminism could be combined with the national liberation movement. There were quite a few crises in the same period, and the feminists who wanted to agree on things had a pretty bad time, because everyone was pulling on their side. We began to discern when politics became involved, and in the end each one of us specialized in a specific field: those of us who specialized in solidarity began to work in the field of gender and development, patriots in the field of movement and gender for the national liberation, those of the assembly in feminism outside the political parties, the Plazandreas in their field and the Lambroas in the feminist political party. So since then, everyone has been working in their own field, and we all usually get together to organize the events of March 8th and November 25th, well, everyone except the Lambroas. But we meet the women of the parties, the women of the syndicates, the NGOs, the environmentalists... It’s a very broad forum where old and young feminists come together to do things together and make joint feminist proposals that can serve to advance everyone.

Were you at the Granda Feminist Days?

Oh, yeah, yeah. We have opened ourselves up to the queer movement in Granada, and now we are fighting against the pathologization of 2012. In fact, they want to renew the census of psychiatric diseases in 2012, and they want to include in that census people who want to make a change of sex or who are intersex but do not want to make a change of sex, they want to classify as pathologies trasexuality and intersexuality, which we are fighting against. Don't let them pathologize sex any more, we've got enough already.

How has society’s attitude towards feminism changed over the years?

Today almost no one says that women are inferior to men, that we must submit to them, that we cannot enter into the “affairs of men”... In that sense, we have made progress. The right to divorce is also viewed favourably by the majority of the population and the right to abortion, even though the Catholic sector that opposes it is still strong. The voices for legal equality and economic equality are also becoming stronger. But we have now invented new “sinners”: young people from other cultures, gays, lesbians and public transgender people. I’ve been to two demonstrations recently because gay couples who were greeting each other in the Old Town have been punished. Such atrocities are kept secret as exceptions, while these “sinners” continue to be punished by the law. We have been sold that everything is done and that we all live in equality, and many people have believed it because it is easier to believe it and not to see oppression, to disguise it. When we say we're on the lesbian side, how much do we support? What are we willing to do to defend and assert their rights? How much do we feel about their struggle? I have worked with teenagers all my life, and there is still a terrible homophobia and not enough strength in co-education, this issue is not given enough importance. Sex education is not a compulsory subject in schools; it is left to the will of the school. Since there is no sexual education, there is no feminist education or co-education. And many women suffer very bad treatment during adolescence, teenage attacks are a daily bread, but we ignore it. In addition, since we have been sold that we live on an equal footing, these girls do not identify the attacks they suffer with their sex or machismo, they consider them “normal” or “endure” them. The double standard we use is very dangerous. Society in general is very misogynistic and we don’t realize it.

Is prevention important?

Of course, we can’t forget that society is misogynistic and that every equanimity we get as women will be made to pay. If you want to be a mother, that will have a price, if you don’t want to be it will also have a price, if you want to be a lesbian, you will have to pay, if you want as many rights as your husband, it will be a toll... We can’t be naive, our freedom is still priced and very pricey. As a collective we are paying for our freedom and rights with blood, and as long as that blood doesn’t stop we haven’t won rights, it’s just exchange, rights for blood. When there's blood left, we can say we've won the rights.

Do you think it is necessary to carry out some elaborations in groups differentiated by sex?

Yes, it is absolutely necessary to do some elaborations in groups of women and others in groups of men. When women’s groups start working for their rights, many men in the area – and some women too – are frightened and don’t know how to position themselves in the new situation. Before they confronted us, against us, but now they don’t know where to place us, what to do in the face of feminism. But I really believe that men who want to do something for equality must, on the one hand, respect the struggle of women and, on the other hand, learn about sex, gender, co-education, as we did... We can’t learn from them, and it’s not our job to be anyone’s psychologists. Women can’t work as teachers of men, they have to go their own way. But this is the same in all the struggles, such as the Saharawi one. If I go there, it's to support their fight, to help them in whatever they ask of me. I'm not going to tell them what to do, and I'm not going to ask them to invest their energy in healing my wounds. If I want to learn, I will ask for advice on the books to read, I will be attentive to the interviews and I will try to take a theoretical basis to better understand the situation of the Saharawis. It’s the same with women’s struggles. Ignorance is courageous. I believe that women should join women’s groups to continue deepening feminism in order to identify and advance our needs. If we don't get together, it's very difficult to move forward.

How do you work on the NGO gender committee?

Some basic feminist premises are accepted among the women and men who make up the committee, but the committee as a whole does not have a feminist basis. In specific cases we work with the coordinator of 8 March and, for example, it is possible to defend the right to abortion from the gender committee for the NGO, but this is not to the liking of all NGOs. Or, for example, we have not even raised the issue of prostitution yet, because the debate is still very intense and they say that they do not want to boast too much of the dust. The anthropologist and classical feminist Dolores Juliano has helped me to focus more on this topic. He taught me that the word should be given to women, that we cannot decide on behalf of others. And this is what I try to strengthen from the NGO Gender Committee.

Is that why you are against the abolition of prostitution?

Yes, abolishing prostitution today would be like abolishing marriage. Let the women choose, and guarantee their protection and well-being: treat them well, pay them dignified, take away their stigma, be the subjects of rights, the protagonists of their stories. Abolitionism is imposing, and it is the prohibitions and impositions that oppress us. In addition, there is a marked puritanism behind these decisions. Oh, our Puritan Basque Country! This puritaniso is against women: our poor mothers were not allowed to show their neckline, and now they want to remove the veil from some, put it on others, prohibit some from showing the thong, encourage others to operate their breasts... Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Leave us alone! How many rules, how many hierarchies over women! As the French writer Marie Darrieussecq says, “I get annoyed when they open a bottle of cream and tell me how to give it, when they go to lunch and put me on a diet, when they give me instructions for everything.” Let us do things the way we want, to go in and out, because we are mature and complete people. Or when we're going to be mothers! The retro vade! How many maternal commands there are around giving advice and exchanges so that we do not forget what kind of mother we should be. It's just terrifying! Let's do what we want! Let everyone find their own way. We are under enormous pressure from women and especially mothers in the Basque Country.

You say that the NGO gender committee has no feminist basis. Are women’s liberation struggles possible without a feminist foundation?

This is the problem that we have in the NGO gender committee. Of course things can be done, but in all groups without a feminist base the message that feminists receive is “don’t get angry, be careful, slowly”, we must be politically correct so as not to offend anyone. It is forbidden to be angry. However, we need to focus on all areas, and progress can also be made from such gender committees. Groups or projects that address the gender perspective are based on a pact, the treaty to fight against gross gender discrimination, to work against gender inequity. In NGOs it often happens that women’s jobs are free, while men’s jobs are paid. If a popular dining room has been organized somewhere and women are cooking and partying, it is presumed that they will do so voluntarily. Men’s jobs, on the other hand, are paid. Women need to be supportive of us. Men who are experts in gender charge, consider it unofficial to be experts in gender, but how many feminists there are who have never seen soss for being experts in gender! And I'm not saying that men shouldn't be paid, of course they should! But we also have to value ourselves and make ourselves look like serious workers. How much work and time we have volunteered!

So you do what you can on the NGO gender committee. Where do you do what you want?

The group of women I'm in now is from Skolastika, and I'm also closely following Sareina. We are recovering female Republican writers in the Skolastika reading group. For feminism to thrive, it is imperative for women to come together in a group, to debate, to question ourselves again and again. All the rest are traps, they can serve to obtain specific rights and take some steps around gender and development, but the struggle for women’s liberation has been and is carried out by women, grouped together in groups, otherwise there is no progress. I, for example, did not know anything about queer theories and the first time I read Judith Buttler recommended by the girls of the group, it seemed very superficial. I didn’t understand what the games of women seizing a man’s foot and putting a sock in their crotch were all about, it seemed childish. I have worked mainly in the group with women from the 3rd world and other cultures, topics that were distant, frivolous to me. Women have much more serious problems!, I thought, what is this about the fact that you can choose men’s roles if you want? But, of course, I was confused, and I learned, and largely thanks to my daughter, today I have enough tools to consider and value the queer movement as a feminist and liberating movement.

You say that the rights and freedoms that women have acquired are very weak. For what reason?

Two years ago I had to reconfirm the manifesto “I too have aborted”, like when I was 20 years old. The right wing wanted to deprive us of the few rights we had acquired in relation to abortion, and in the face of the right-wing offensive we had to campaign vigorously so as not to lose the rights we had acquired. We quickly give up our rights. And the proclamations soon seem too harsh, too exaggerated, too crippling... Women, to be liked by men, we have the right to do what we want: we can operate breasts, wear heels, go dressed like this or that, wear a veil... Women have done a lot of nonsense and other non-nonsense to please men, and it is legitimate. To me, this doesn’t concern me at all, I think it’s very good, if the woman makes her choices consciously. But the fact that women believe that there are injustices against sick men in the law against male violence... is another matter. On March 8, I attended a conference given by some lawyers who told us plainly: the number of women who use this law unjustly for their own benefit is not worth considering, they are only a few individuals, a very small number is the number of women who abuse the law against male violence. But every time a law or a rule in favor of women comes out, we immediately get scared and say “and poor men?”, “and if they get angry?”, “we’re not going to be passing, are we?”... We have the imposition intimately involved and it often seems to us to pass even the proclamation of our most basic rights. It pains me to have to pay so much blood for our freedoms and rights. And in addition, the rights we obtain tend to be very weak in all areas, so that they can be eliminated at once.

The feminism of the Arab and Muslim countries is what you know the most. What have you learned from Arab women?

I've known the Sahara since I was very young, and I've had a fight with them for a long time. But I immediately started to get to know Saharawi women and my status as a feminist inspired me to get to know Saharawi women, Arab women in depth. I tried to get to know their liberation struggle. Many years ago we managed to bring Arab women from the group of Internationalist Women: The Argellians, Fatima Mernissi of Morocco, the Sahrawis... Four or five Arabs came to tell us about their experience as feminist women. When you look at Muslim and Arab women, you realize a number of things. To begin with, saying Muslim is as inaccurate as saying Christian: what do you have to do with a Brazilian Christian who practices voodoo? The same thing that a Saharawi has to do with a Muslim woman from Yemen, almost nothing. To say Arabic is more specific.

What are the peculiarities of the Arab feminine?

The Arab peoples, from the Maghreb to Afghanistan, are peoples who have drunk a lot of their previous cultures and have become very rich. The Greeks, the Turks, have drunk from the nomads of the desert, the cultures of Damascus and Baghdad. So they had a very enriching period, but then they also had a huge colonialist downturn that pushed them back as a people, and they have come out of colonialism in the way they have been able, with a neocolonialism that goes quite badly, in many cases. The women of these villages are also fighting for freedom, but their base is different. They are as strong for their emancipation as we are, they are very strong, very courageous women, but in some cases they are fighting for the rights that we have achieved. They also have rights before us.

For example, for example?

The right to work and study. On the one hand, because in the Qur’an great importance is given to studies and on the other hand, the ideal woman here was a docile and domesticated woman, while she was without great intellectual ambitions, there she was valued because she was an intelligent woman, an artist, who knew about literature and painting. The right to vote was also obtained by the Egyptians in 1950. Imagine that the Swiss had to wait until almost the 80s. Women in Arab countries first fought for personal freedom, the right to go anywhere without anyone’s consent, then the right to study and work, then the right to choose whether or not to marry and to choose who to marry in case of marriage (and it is often more difficult to choose not to marry than to choose who to marry)...

Do we look at Arab women with paternity or compassion?

Yes, patients, we thought. And we do not realize that they give us a thousand laps in studies and in the world of work, that they are also ahead of us in political participation. They have the greatest difficulties in sexual intercourse. In fact, sex there has never been punished, sex here was a sin but in Muslim culture sex has always been the best aspect of marriage, and although it is still punished outside of marriage, it is very much cared for inside of marriage, they have long had manuals on sexual practices to give pleasure to women, and it is important for Muslims to enjoy and enjoy sex. The fact is that outside of marriage, before marriage and after widowhood, they are not allowed to have sex. Most women in Nigeria who are called adulterers are usually widows and are punished for not having remarried. In addition to this, Muslims have a great pudor for the body, which also does not allow them to release it. Here, we are almost always paternal about Muslim women, but they are very clear about their path of liberation, and in doing so dira.Nik I will not tell another woman what to do to free her, if she tells me that she wants to free her I will support her. We cannot tell anyone (neither men nor women) what the path to their freedom should be. We can share our experience, however, if it serves anyone to use it. From there, one must be able to free oneself, although for this purpose the support of the group is indispensable.

And how exactly do you operate from the NGO Gender Committee? How do you integrate a gender perspective into your cooperation projects?

usko The Government has recently begun to consider whether or not NGO projects are gender-mainstreamed when deciding whether to accept them. We guarantee that every time a project is proposed from NGOs, there is a group of women or a women’s NGO that will decide how to apply this provocation in the destination country as well. If the management of the destination country is carried out exclusively by men, there is no task. If there are women organized for their freedom in the country where this project will be implemented, we try to find their participation, at all levels. We guarantee that their needs are also taken into account among the needs that the project will satisfy, as well as that they participate in the management and direction of the project. We guarantee the needs, participation and direction of women. This is what all NGOs with an integrated gender perspective should do. There are plenty of handbooks that explain whether a particular project meets women’s needs, whether it has ensured women’s participation, and what the indicators are to determine whether it has ensured women’s leadership. This is what it means to take a gender perspective into account in cooperation projects. What's going on? Even in the field of cooperation, many find it normal to be a generic male, valid for everyone, and many believe that without a gender perspective, a project that is generally proposed meets the needs of women and men alike.