Women with epilepsy also celebrate Women’s Day. We have come a long way since those times when women were relegated to housework and childcare. I do not mean by this that these are menial tasks, far from it. What is important to highlight is that they were not allowed to study and, consequently, to have a professional career.
There were women who had to disguise themselves as men in order to study, such as Emilia Pardo Bazán. Others, who attended clandestine schools of higher education in Poland (they did admit women, but clandestinely) and later received not only one Nobel Prize, but two. I am talking about Marie Curie.
Women have been banned from education because it was not in their interest to be educated people and so they were submissive and obedient to their husbands. But there have always been rebellious women and it is to them that we owe the fact that the situation of women today is much better. Let us remember that not so long ago, in Spain, a woman could not even have a checking account or open a business without her father’s permission if she was single or her husband’s if she was married. We have come a long way. But there is still a long way to go.
And what about women with epilepsy? Well, we are fighters, warriors. We also have great women with epilepsy who have made great achievements and have overcome many barriers. For example, Marion Clignet who had her first epileptic seizure as a teenager and as she could not drive, she took her bike to get around, becoming six times world cycling champion. Or the great Agatha Christie, whose epilepsy did not prevent her from becoming a world-famous writer.
More information about Marion Clignet: https://www.epsyhealth.com/seizure-epilepsy-blog/inspirational-epilepsy-stories-marion-clignet
Emilia Pardo Bazán
Marie Curie
Marion Clignet
Agatha Christie
My great regret is that, currently, the people who should be more serious and committed to continue working to achieve real equality between women and men, our rulers, are turning feminism into a pure caricature, falling into ideological and political issues without paying attention to the major problems of women and without being able to make agreements or to place this cross-cutting issue at the center of all policies. This is not the way forward. And we will see if we do not go backwards.
From my small plot of land, I will continue to fight for the rights of women in general and for those of women with epilepsy in particular, to achieve true equality of treatment in access to work, so that we are not discriminated against because of the disease, so that special attention is paid to women with epilepsy during pregnancy, so that we are considered fit people to develop any activity that we propose.
