Our roots
Fem Ius is a space coordinated by two lawyers who have worked together for the last 15 years, applying a rights-based, feminist, intersectional approach based on four key values
01
Positive change
We understand the law and human rights as tools for changing lives. We offer guidance on how to apply them in accordance with International, European, national and local human rights standards. In the process, we are able to critically analyse existing legislation and suggest fairer, more restorative alternatives.
02
Collective commitment
We embrace situated knowledge and acknowledge our position as women lawyers, researchers and trainers based in Madrid who have absorbed knowledge from other places and professionals. We believe in collective strength: we stand alongside those who speak out and listen to those with different knowledge and experiences to our own.
03
Social justice
We believe in a system that cares, protects and repairs harm, eliminating structures that sustain discrimination and violence. We are aware, however, that legal proceedings can be difficult and revictimising. This is why we provide support, promote understanding and defend the rights of all women.
04
Care
Care underpins our relationships and our decision-making in both our professional and personal lives. We work by listening and building bonds and by responding to and respecting the different pace, needs and experiences of each person or organisation, including our own and those of our professional partners.
What do we do?
Our work to defend women’s rights and strengthen policies to enhance equality and prevent discrimination and gender-based violence includes:
- Legal advice and accompaniment for survivors of gender-based violence.
- Legal research using methodologies specific to the sociological analysis of law and legal feminisms.
- Teaching, training and awareness-raising.
- Consulting and training for social organisations, companies and public institutions.
- Strategic litigation and political advocacy with international, European, national, regional and local organisations.
Our team
I am a senior lawyer and political scientist with extensive international experience. I work for and in defence of women’s rights and in recent years I have specialised in European Union public policy. I have approached my profession from different angles, as a lawyer, consultant, advisor, negotiator, researcher, lecturer and activist, which has given me a holistic view of the challenges we face in achieving feminist democracies. I firmly believe that law can and should be transformative.
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As a lawyer and political scientist, I have embraced legal feminism since the early days of my career. I have allowed myself to be guided by the theorists who came before me, as well as the academics, professionals and survivors with whom I have shared workspaces, experiences, successes and setbacks.
I began my career as a legal adviser and lawyer specialising in gender-based violence, joining interdisciplinary networks within the feminist movement in Madrid to participate in political advocacy campaigns.
Since then, I have consistently sought to deconstruct the law in an attempt to move beyond traditional frameworks and find alternative ways of understanding, doing, applying and interpreting law from an intersectional, relational and transnational perspective, both in my university teaching and research and in my legal and political praxis.
As a consultant, I have exchanged knowledge and practices in Egypt, Tunisia and Moldova. I have also worked in Colombia, where I led the IDEDH-OEI human rights school and explored transitional justice and the radical idea that we do not want “war to destroy us or peace to oppress us”. As a lawyer and activist, I have been involved in strategic litigation, shadow reporting and amicus curiae work.
I recently worked in Brussels as an adviser to the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, where I drafted amendments, participated in negotiating teams for several directives affecting the lives of women and girls and delved deeper into the interstices of politics and law.
I remain committed to developing and implementing strategies to allow us to use the law as a tool for change in a collective, horizontal manner.
PhD in Public Law and Philosophy. I have combined my work as a researcher and lecturer at universities in Spain, the United Kingdom and Mexico, with specialist legal advice on human rights and equality policies, both in European, national and local institutions and in non-governmental organisations. I have also accompanied survivors of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and other forms of gender-based violence in their processes of reparation and search for justice.
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My vocation for teaching led me to obtain a doctorate in Public Law and Legal and Political Philosophy with a thesis in which I argue for the recognition of the right to care and the social and legal restructuring of responsibilities that currently tend to fall largely to women.
I have been a university lecturer and researcher (Antígona Group, Faculty of Law, Autonomous University of Barcelona) and a visiting researcher at the University of London (SOAS) and the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí in Mexico. Taking awareness-raising as the starting point for any form of sociolegal change, I continue to research and deliver training in human rights, equality policy and frameworks to protect women’s rights.
I believe that legal feminism is more than just a tool for critically analysing the law and that it allows us to rethink the practice of law and the institutions that apply it. This has prompted me to combine my academic activity with work as a legal adviser to public institutions (Institute of Women, European Parliament) and international and Spanish NGOs working to defend women’s rights.
Like Elena, I am aware that rights are constructed, claimed and fought for alongside other women, as part of collective networks, by listening to other voices and discovering different realities. For this reason, I have provided legal advice and accompaniment to women who have survived different forms of violence and discrimination, including sex trafficking and gender-based violence, working as part of multidisciplinary teams and in contact with other social and institutional agents.
Together, we are drawing on our wealth of knowledge and experience to embark on this new professional venture. Our work is driven by conviction.
Our roots
We worked at the European Parliament for five years, where we presented legislative proposals and participated in teams negotiating directives associated with women’s rights (i.e. the directives on violence against women, trafficking, victims of crime, pay transparency and equality bodies), as well as contributing to other parliamentary activities relating to care, sexual and reproductive rights, hate crime and feminist foreign policy.
We have carried out consulting and training for social organisations, companies and public institutions on topics such as legislation and public policy on gender-based violence and support for survivors; evaluation of resources to support victims of gender-based violence; sexual and reproductive rights; workplace harassment; equality plans and policies; co-responsibility policies; elder abuse; and peace and nonviolence.
We have worked as professors and as researchers on transnational projects funded by international organisations, such as the International Organization for Migration and the European Union.
We have published articles on ways to better protect women’s rights.
We have delivered workshops, courses and lectures to legal professionals and other groups, including university and secondary school students, with a focus on equality and human rights.
We have carried out political advocacy, especially through shadow reporting to the United Nations and the Council of Europe, strategic litigation and amicus curiae work.
We have also provided legal advice for survivors of gender-based violence.