Ayelén Mazzina: ‘Scrapping programmes that protected women is deeply perverse’

What President Javier Milei’s government is doing is not an austerity measure. It is a political decision, one that is cruel and deeply ideological. Scrapping 13 programmes that protected women, gender minorities and the families of femicide victims is not a budget cut – it is an act of abandonment. It is part of a plan of exclusion, of hatred towards those who need the state most. When a woman is murdered, something breaks forever in her family.

The state cannot bring that life back, but it can – and must – be there to embrace that mother, those children, so they do not have to face their pain alone. At the Women, Gender & Diversity Ministry, we always tried to be there. We didn’t always succeed, but there was a clear political decision: to build practical tools so that those families would not be left adrift, so that women and gender minorities would know they were not alone, that the state would be there to help them rebuild their lives.

Today, the government is eliminating all of that. Not because of economic necessity, but as a political choice. Because they know their economic model is going to fail, and they need to discipline, punish, and erase from the map anything that even smells of social justice or hard-won rights.

They cut programmes that provided support to grandmothers raising orphaned grandchildren.

They eliminated psychological support for sisters who witnessed their sister’s murder.

They shut down safe spaces for women fleeing violence with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

What kind of government tightens the belt on victims? They also got rid of inclusion policies for trans people, local support programmes and training initiatives to prevent gender-based violence.

These were not expenses. They were investments – in dignified lives, in real equality, in social justice.

They now ask, cynically, what the point of that Ministry ever was. The answer lies with every mother who was able to bury her daughter with dignity. With every woman who found shelter, and then a job. With every young trans woman who, for the first time, was treated with respect in a public office.

Sometimes we were too late. But we always knew which side we were on: on the side of the victims, on the side of those who suffer most, on the side of life. Today the state is stepping aside. Or worse – the state is becoming complicit.

This is not a technical decision. It is not an accounting exercise. It is ideological and deeply perverse. They are tearing down policies of care because they cannot stand the idea of a state that embraces, that protects, that guarantees rights. Because hate serves them – to cover up the cuts and justify their indifference.

I ask myself: Where will those women go now that the support network is gone? Who will explain to a little girl why the state no longer protects her? Who will answer when the next victim has nowhere to go?

As a former minister for women, gender and diversity and human rights advocate, I raise my voice so this decision does not go unnoticed.