The female vote in the 1933 and 1936 elections
Introduction
This bibliographic review raises a critical approach to the studies on the influence that the female vote had on the electoral results of 1933 and 1936.
These results have not been widely analyzed from the gender perspective, based on their need due to the constitutional debate of 1931 in which opponents of this right to women argued that this, in exercise of their right, would have an impactnegative for the Republic, so it is essential to know what really happened.
Historically, the triumph of the conservative block in the 1933 elections has been attributed to the female vote, being today an idea that is not supported by current historiographic, political and social knowledge.
Likewise, it has been addressed through incomplete works and dealing separate1936 elections This causality does not appear, being an still pending issue for the historian but does not manifest itself in bibliographic production.
In the first part of this review, the electoral results centered in 1933 will be treated to see how the different authors address this task and enter the criticism of the lack of available data and the need to treat them from an interdisciplinary context. In the second part, the analysis will be carried out on the results of the 1936 elections, where there is a greater bibliographic production but is not addressed from the gender perspective that is applied to the first elections. Finally, the main conclusions of the review will be collected.
The electoral results of 1933
In 1931, during the constitutional debate, the conservative parties positioned themselves in favor of granting democratic law to the woman of the vote, while the progressives were reluctant to it, both for partisan purposes and based on the fact that the woman would not vote freely,but would be influenced by the Church and its confessors.
This case would be framed in the thought prior to the first wave of feminism in which he has been portrayed in historiography to women as a housewife and religious, without considering it as a critical person and their own ideas.
However, to know the real impact that had the approval of said right, you have to enter the low bibliography that is in this regard and that highlights the importance of contextualizing the available data before reaching an affirmation.
The works on these elections, at least until the end of the 20th century, have not come to analyze the electoral results, but have remained with the brief image that both political parties and the press reflected (Camino Rodríguez, 2017, 181). It is true that when the secret vote is more difficult, the analysis is difficult, but therefore we must go to electoral sociology and use tools to reach an approximation of the problem.
In 1933, the alliance of the progressive political forces that gathered Republicans and Socialists who ruled was fragmented in the face of the elections of the same year, which, according to the bibliography (Villalaín García, 2012; Villa García, 2013), made him make himThe conservative block took the victory of these elections, contradicting the propaganda that was made in this regard. This fact was widely used so that opponents of the granting of the right to vote to women reaffirmed the ideas they presented, that is, that the vote of them would be directed to conservative positions.
Therefore, it can be observed as these electoral results have always been treated from an incriminating discourse towards women who, little by little, is disappearing thanks to historiographic work.
The electoral results of 1936
The 1936 elections resulted in the victory of the Popular Front emerged by the coalition of left -wing political parties.
For these elections, historiographically the female political option has been considered as a family vote, that is, the entire family unit votes the same for what does not influence the correlations of forces resulting, only that support is folded to these forces.
A significant change that was regarding the previous elections was the way to attract the female vote towards the different political options, presenting specific claim in their electoral programs for this electoral group so that parties that did not adapt to it were disadvantaged.
For the 1936 elections, a complete work on voting trends in Barcelona has been carried out in Barcelona in which the electoral census sample is divided by participation between men and women, also differentiating age groups, literacy level and profession. In this analysis the authors expose the importance of investigating the conditions of each voter beyond sex. As an example, it is shown that there is a geographical distribution of the vote between workers and residential neighborhoods, as well as the importance of the degree of abstention present in the population of both sexes.
Although there was a change of political tendency in this period, studies in Republican electoral sociology claim that the changes with respect to those of 1933 were of less impact despite the results of the results in the final composition of Parliament, that is, theWomen’s vote was distributed by existing electoral trends, being the greatest impact on the participation of women in activities and affiliation to political parties.
However, these electoral results have not been treated with the same gender perspective that we could see in those of 1933, as Camino Rodríguez stands out in their works. On this occasion a debate about the female vote is not created because there is no victory of the conservative block. This fact seems very remarkable, since it does not allow patterns to be able to compare both elections under the same conditions and that it has not been considered as a relevant event.
Another aspect that especially attracts attention is that the works that analyze the elections have focused in a provincial or regional manner, on publications such as González Martínez and Nicolás Marín (1996) in which the case of Murcia is analyzed;García García (1996) focused on the results in the province of Huelva. As an example of a compendium at the national level is the analysis carried out by LIZ and Miguel (1977), but needs a detailed review with the female case.
Conclusions
In the treatment of the debate raised by the inclusion of women in political life through the exercise of the right to vote for the first time in Spain in 1933 and later in 1936 it can be seen how there is an important lack of work and studies carried out that analyze theResults from the point of view of electoral sociology, a lack of authors but that do not participate in the production of this nature. There is a lack of information that the historical agenda must investigate.
From what has been seen, the historiographic review is necessary to have a more successful approach to the subject and thus be able to eliminate important topics, through dissemination, which have focused on blaming the woman of the electoral results of 1933.
In this work it has also been reflected that, despite the low bibliographic and historiographic production of the subject, the analyzes that have been carried out of the results of both elections have not been treated from the same perspective.
The 1933 elections have given more importance to the ideology that the woman could vote and has been treated from this subject;While those of 1936 have not been examined from this point of view, so I consider that, if there are no way to standardize studies from the same positions, the comparison between them really becomes an arduous task.
Similarly, both results are compared to the last ones in which only male suffrage were available and it would be interesting and necessary to see the conditions of these as well, looking for standardization to compare again.
While it is true that gender studies are missing on the first elections in which Spanish could vote, in the historiography of other countries there is also this lack, not only being a lack at the level of Spain.
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