Katherine Miranda on the controversial appointment of Juan Carlos Florián as a mini-equality representative: "Today, this government is seeing parity as a decoration."

A heated legal controversy has erupted over the appointment of Juan Carlos Florián as Minister of Equality. Despite recognizing himself as a "minister," the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca is reviewing lawsuits alleging that the government is violating the Quota Law, which requires at least 50 percent of women in the highest-level decision-making positions in the State.

In Congress, some voices have spoken out about whether this appointment would violate the Quota Law. Representative Katherine Miranda , for example, asserts that the government is regressing in the struggle for women.

In an interview with EL TIEMPO, the representative discussed whether or not the Quota Law is violated and the implications this appointment would have.

For many decades, it took all of us women who served in Congress and participated in political activism to achieve political parity. We finally achieved it in 2000, with the so-called quota law. While it wasn't ideal, at least we achieved progress. It was born with the true objective of correcting a historical injustice against women. It was a systematic exclusion of women from positions of power.

Today, this government is viewing parity as a mere ornament, simply as a number, and it doesn't understand what it means for women in politics and that it is a mechanism of justice to ensure that women are represented in decision-making, in this case in the cabinet.

The national government's argument for appointing Juan Carlos Florián because he identifies as gender fluid strikes me as a mockery. He doesn't even identify as gender fluid; he defines himself as a queer person. This in no way compensates for the female quota, and to me, it's a complete fraud and a trap for the law. Furthermore, to say that the presidency or the quota law, which necessarily requires a woman, believe that it can be replaced with loose, ambiguous interpretations, is opening the door to gradually dismantling the progress we've made with respect to the quota law and women's participation. This is also because the Constitutional Court has been quite clear and has stated that formal equality is not enough; material equality is necessary. Today, Gustavo Petro's government is taking giant steps backward.

We're talking about nothing more and nothing less than the Ministry of Equality, which is also important because the Ministry of Equality demands that women be recognized as a historically discriminated group and not simply relativized with an appointment like Juan Carlos Florián's.

It's not about ignoring individual rights; it's about the government fulfilling its obligation to ensure that women have a place in state decision-making. Petro sold us the narrative that without women, change comes with women, or else it's not change . There has been change, but for the worse, a setback for our rights. And it's not just the appointment of Juan Carlos Florián that's astonishing today, but the whole host of cases of men who find themselves in government today, protected, sheltered, and protected by Gustavo Petro, with complaints of domestic violence and sexual violence.

What the government is doing today with this appointment, especially by introducing it as a gender quota, undermines the quota law, and in my opinion, it's an unacceptable step backward. What they talk about as progressivism, to me, is a step backward.

He doesn't recognize himself as a woman, because he's been introduced to it, and he doesn't recognize himself as a woman; he recognizes himself as gender fluid. He says he's a queer person; he doesn't recognize himself as a woman. We have to start from that.

Without a doubt, what's happening is that tomorrow anyone can say, "I'm a man, I'm a woman, I'm fluid," and they'll take away women's representation. But we also can't forget that there's already a serious case of a complaint by a former deputy minister who was trans, who has filed a complaint against Florián for harassment, and who was fired.

I find it quite paradoxical, but above all painful, to see such a person in the Ministry of Equality, occupying a position that should legally be assigned to women, and to have such serious complaints against them. The Ministry of Equality is not only inefficient in its execution and mission, but its appointments truly fail to represent its mission.

No, not at all. Feminist rhetoric has been used, women's empowerment rhetoric has been used simply to get votes during the campaign, but in practice what we've seen is abuse, harassment of women, and justification by President Gustavo Petro—who isn't just any official, but the current head of state —justifying the attacks, the appointments, ignoring women's complaints, calling them into question. And I find that quite painful, but at the same time quite revealing of what this government truly stands for, what progressivism, feminism, and the struggle that women have historically waged.

Not only is Florián being embraced, but what's even more painful is that he ignores the historic work that the center and the left have done in this fight for women's rights. What's serious isn't just the appointment, it's the disregard, and perhaps I would say the annihilation, of women's work in the feminist struggle.

Maria Alejandra Gonzalez Duarte