During a meeting with Chavista feminists, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro said on Tuesday that one of the great tasks in women's lives is to “give birth”.
“Women are essential. Without women, society simply would not exist. Women, we know, have great tasks in life: the task of giving birth, of giving birth, of giving birth, of giving birth,” Maduro said during the Venezuelan Women's Congress 2022, which was broadcast on the state television network VTV.
Maduro also stated that women have a responsibility to “forge, train, raise, build values.” He added: “All women have in their deep innocence an innate sense to protect and love humanity, boys and girls.”
It is not the first time that Maduro has spoken of Venezuelan women in this regard. In March 2020, during a meeting with members of the National Humanized Birth Plan, the leader of the Chavista regime addressed dozens of women present at the event and urged them to give birth en masse. “The woman was made to give birth,” he emphasized.
“To give birth, then, to give birth. All women to have six children, let the homeland grow”, said the dictator on national radio and television channel. “We have to turn the Humanized Birth Plan into a mission. The Humanized Birth Plan has to be taught in primary and secondary schools.”
Maduro's words quickly generated a strong repudiation on social networks, since the health situation in Venezuela does not provide the necessary conditions for a pregnant woman.
On the other hand, the Venezuelan organization Utopix reported on Tuesday that at least 41 femicides occurred in the Caribbean country from the beginning of January to the end of February of this year, representing an average of one murder of a woman every 35 hours.
“From the State, there is no concrete proposal to address this problem, which only shows the great shortcoming that exists in public policies related to the prevention, attention and mitigation of gender-based violence against women,” said the NGO on its official website.
In his speech on Tuesday, Maduro did not comment on the femicides that have been reported in the country in recent years.
(With information from EFE)
Keep reading: