Differences in the role of Spanish women if not for the Francoist dictatorship
From 1936 to 1939, the Civil War spread for Spain. Generalissimo Francisco Franco had risen to defeat the monarchical system and establish his dictatorship, which would last 36 years. During this time, society and political oppression were serious.
As in any dictatorship, the public opposition to the government was not tolerated, and who adopted a position against the government would be more likely to disappear or be killed. Women had very few civil freedoms;They were only allowed to be wives and were not allowed to carry out work or opinions. His role was to remain silent in the shadows of his husbands, taking care of the house and the children. In 1975, after Franco’s death, a constitutional monarchy was established. This new democracy gave the citizens of Spain new freedoms to enjoy. The transition especially affected women.
Their roles both at home and in society were allowed to change practically overnight. By learning from the life of many women during the Franco dictatorship, it is possible to answer the question with the idea of the butterfly effect;If the woman had not been so repressed in the past, for example, in sports, as Xavier Pujadas I Martí states, there would be more papers for women and more influence of women in the sports world. In the same way, if the progress of women’s papers would not have been stopped by Franco, there could be more women in power for a longer time and the whole world would be a different place due to the way of thinking of women. However, even if we were equal in the past, we might not be working for a feminist agenda today, but people would still be working hard towards a different agenda because people inherently want to try themselves.
Before investigating the issue of "Women during the Franco dictatorship", it had limited knowledge of women’s experiences during this time. I knew that women were repressed and unequal compared to men, but after reading these sources I have a broader vision of many aspects, for example the image of women during the dictatorship, the experiences of female athletes and also atrue vision of women’s experiences in prison.
‘La Voz sleeping” by Dulce Chacón is a novel that uses interviews to tell the storys of everyday life of many women imprisoned in Las Sales prison in Madrid during the Franco regime. The source is great since it offers a vision of the personal experiences of women’s real life and the reader can connect at a deeper level with the women who lived during this period. In the novel, the reader can perceive dignity, hopes, love and pain of some women who only lived in those times and were sometimes imprisoned for reasons that seem incredible today. The most important thing is that he writes about a period of time during which the majority of writers were censored, giving importance to novels like this, written in the period after the conflict, which can give an idea of historical suffering and the events thatThey happened.
Talking about censures during this time is also related to the representation of the image of women through the weather press. Muñoz Ruiz analyzes the representation of the female image during Francoism through the study of the press specifically destined for women. This article reveals how the press plays an important role in the influence of how public behaves, for example, the Spanish women’s press constantly proposes women a series of attitudes and behaviors that will affect their subsequent behavior. It explains how the main interest of the Spaniards during 1955 and 1970 is reduced to fashion and beauty and this is one of the main reasons why the female press is criticized for reducing the sphere of female to purely external expression. During this period, the main destiny of a woman was to marry and have children, which meant that he needed to find a husband and attracted man with US external appearance. Interestingly, the article mentions how the discourse of magazines differed between the idea of inner beauty and the practical need of women to be beautiful to find a husband.
Link this idea of behavior customs is the article, ”women and sport during Franco (1939-1975)’ ’. The press of the time exposes not to contribute to breaking gender stereotypes because it does not stand out or shows the presence of female athletes. Pilot study on the oral memory of athletes. This research focuses on female athletes during Franco’s dictatorship and his perceptions about the circumstances surrounding women’s sport in that period. This is the article talks about barriers to access to women’s sports practice, the negative opinion of women’s sports practice and the lack of financial support to female athletes. Talk about how the physical education that girls received at school was very scarce and the contents that took place in those classes were very basic. The limitations to school development came from the different roles assigned to men and women, and to the consideration that women’s education was less valuable than that of men.
One of the primary sources I studied is political discourse by Dolores Ibárruri. "They will not happen" was a speech that she urged her fellow citizens to put aside her other political differences and join to fight against Franco’s fascist forces. She ended her speech with the famous words: ‘The fascists will not pass! NOT PASS!"" They will not happen "became the motto on the anti-fascist side during the Spanish Civil War. It is still used as motto for other causes today. In 1977, he remained active in politics there as deputy and honorary president of the Spanish Communist Party until his death in 1989. Although this speech was said in 1936, Ibárruri still offered a series of speeches, some of them radio broadcasts in Madrid: ‘Fascism will not happen!’, ‘Better to die standing than live kneeling!’(September 3),‘ Greetings to our militiawomen on the front line ’etc. The speech, and its other speeches, helps us understand the complexity of the subject because it shows another type of woman to which the sources talked about. It shows a time of time, clearly with a lot of power and someone who uses her voice to express theminfluential like Ibárruri, other women would not have inspired to make a change and move towards a feminist world.
As well as this speech, an interview with Garcia Madrid Angeles, held by students from the University of California as part of his project called “The Spanish Civil War Memory Project”, reveals a lot about the lives of Spanish women in the Spain ofFrank. Angeles was a political prisoner during the civil war. She talks about joining a socialist circle, the 1936 elections, attacks and hunger during the civil war and remembers supervising the group that made uniforms for Brigade 49. Talk about being maintained in sales prison for one year and talks about horrible conditions (one of the most formidable Francoist prisons). What we discover from the interview is according to what we discover from secondary sources. It can be inferred that the low quality of life of these women gave them an incentive to work towards a more Eutopic society and has shaped today’s roles of women.
To conclude, the roles of current women would not be so different, but they could have progressed much earlier if it were not for the Francoist dictatorship. Specifically, there could have been more financing and recognition for female athletes, the press would not have reduced the sphere of female to purely external expression and women could have generally had more economic opportunities and independence in the early years. In other words, women would have been more expert if Franco’s regimes did not stop them;Women only make up 46.36% of the Spanish workforce, and if it were not for the Franco dictatorship that made it difficult and it was a norm for women not to have a job, today there could be more women in the workplace andMore equality between the roles of men and women.
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