This article gives a more detailed discussion on the progress Spain has made on these issues, at least outside of business and sport.
It was paywalled to me.
Will summarize it later if I cannot get the gift link to work. Initial effort didn’t.
Summary: (see article three posts above)
In 1997 [Ana Orantes] appeared on a Spanish television show to describe decades of vicious abuse by her husband: wild jealousy, beatings and isolation. Two weeks later she was found tied to a chair and burned to death by the man she had denounced. Spain was shocked not only by her murder, but also by the fact that she had called the police many times, to no avail.
Compared with such abuse, the kiss Luis Rubiales planted on an unwilling Jenni Hermoso on August 20th might seem trivial. Ms Hermoso and Spain’s women’s football team had just won the World Cup and while passing out medals, Mr Rubiales, the head of Spain’s football federation, grabbed the back of her head, pulled her towards him and planted his mouth on hers. A “peck”, he later said, and consensual.
She disagrees. The uproar that has consumed Spain since shows how machista the country still is, say many Spanish feminists. But the uproar can also be taken as an example of just how feminist the country has become…in Spanish life, sexism was slow to fade… the government [of] Zapatero (2003-11) …set about passing a gender-violence law, filling half the cabinet with women and liberalising abortion…
In today’s politics, Spanish women are doing [extraordinarily well]. Sánchez, the prime minister, boasts a cabinet not just featuring women, but dominated by them: all three deputy prime ministers, and the ministers of economy, finance, labour, justice, defence and industry, as well as those ministries traditionally given to women, such as education and social affairs. Ministers, male and female, have been unanimous in calling for Mr Rubiales to go…
Political progress is reflected, though unevenly, in society. The press extensively reports on violence against women, and the radio frequently reminds women of the hotline they can call to report it… Last year a law banned street harassment, in the country once known for piropos: florid compliments offered to a woman in public.
…On August 25th Mr Rubiales gave a speech in which he was widely expected to resign. Instead he declared his refusal to do so, blaming a “false feminism” for the predicament he was in. The audience that heartily applauded him included the trainers of the women’s and men’s national teams, leading to calls for them to quit too.
Spanish sport is not unusually sexist. Women athletes are closely followed and their victories celebrated: last year Barcelona’s women’s team broke its own world attendance record for a women’s event packing 91,600 fans into Camp Nou… The national team’s World Cup win dominated newspaper front pages in the same way that the men’s title did in 2010… Inequality does persist in pay… But such complaints are common in other countries too.
…The area of Spanish life [that remain stuck in the past are the Catholic [church] and business. A study from 2017 found that just 22% of top executive positions were held by women, a bit better than in Britain or America but worse than the 35% average in euro-zone countries… [at the] sporting body, just 9% of the governing board are women. Such clubbishness may explain more than anything the roomful of men applauding Mr Rubiales’s rant against feminism…
…Fifty years ago, Spanish women were second-class citizens. Twenty-five years ago, they were shocked by Ana Orantes’s murder into demanding social progress to match their legal emancipation. Today, attitudes often seem to resemble those in Scandinavia more than in neighbouring countries…
Looks like Vilda is gone. Wonder if any other manager has been sacked right after winning a World Cup.
An update on the Women’s World Cup kiss story: Luis Rubiales has been banned from the sport for three years by those paragons of ethical behavior at FIFA. Less than he deserved IMHO but at least it’s something.