Since we commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25th, I'd like to bring up Pedro Mir's poem, "Amen of Butterflies," a verse that resonates with urgency: "There are impetuous marble columns, not erected in time, that cannot withstand the death of certain butterflies." The poet spoke of monumental structures crumbling under the moral weight of injustice. But that image takes on a different meaning when we think of the women in the construction and real estate sectors as those columns.
They are pillars. They support sales teams, lead departments, negotiate multi-million dollar contracts, oversee construction projects, and coordinate developments. They have stood the test of time, occupying spaces that were forbidden to them decades ago. But here lies the brutal paradox: if to remain upright they must constantly be in survival mode, dodging gender violence, resisting microaggressions, justifying their presence, these pillars inevitably erode. They crack. Eventually, they vanish.
It is worth noting that the assassination of the Mirabal sisters in 1960—three women murdered for daring to defy Trujillo's tyranny—marked a historical turning point. Decades later, violence against women persists, albeit with more subtle, more diffuse, and more difficult-to-name forms. And the real estate sector, with its culture of aggressive negotiation and historically male-dominated structures, is not exempt from these dynamics.
I've observed how women in this sector face a form of violence that rarely leaves visible marks. It's microaggression disguised as flattery, the comment about appearance in the middle of a project presentation, the systematic doubt about their technical abilities. It's veiled extortion, where access to certain circles of power requires tolerating insinuations or "favors" that would never be asked of a male colleague. It's deliberate seduction as a strategy to destabilize them, to remind them that before being professionals, they are bodies available for male evaluation.
But perhaps the most insidious violence is that which is exercised among women in the sector: the lack of sisterhood with which another woman who reaches a leadership position is judged, automatically assuming that she got there through merits unrelated to her professional talent. Every time this narrative is perpetuated, every time a colleague's rise is viewed with suspicion, the very structures that oppress them all are reinforced.
We cannot build a sustainable real estate sector on a foundation of normalized violence. We cannot speak of development and growth while the women who sustain these projects must invest more energy in defending themselves than in creating. The legacy we must build is not just one of buildings and housing developments, but of labor dignity, professional respect, and active sisterhood.
The Mirabal sisters didn't die so that violence would continue to be tolerated decades later, even if it's perpetrated with a corporate suit and a signed contract. They were butterflies that shook entire institutions. The women in this sector can be the pillars that ultimately resist, not by enduring the weight of violence, but by refusing to bear it.
