THE HISTORY OF WOMEN AND THE VOTE IN SPAIN
In this article we historically analyze the social, economic and political situation of women in Spain. Throughout history, women in Spain, has been excluded from the public and apart from the discussion forums and as a consequence it was relegated to the family nucleus being their fundamental work to transmit traditional moral values and educate children. This situation has prevailed in Spain to democracy: from thenof communication) and from a change in the family relationship model.
We will begin this panoramic approach of the social, economic and political situation of Spanish women, with a brief historical journey that will help us understand how the different ideological changes, always immersed and determined by a characteristic cultural specificity, have converged in a social reality thatWe could qualify as positive and hopeful moving away from all victimist speech, even though it is evident that women must fight for participation in the construction of gender hegemonic norms and by the spaces of expression and personal fulfillment.
It is interesting to refer to one of the moralistic works that has most influenced the Spanish female imaginary from the Renaissance to the present day, the perfect married (1583) by Fray Luis de León. This author is known as theologian, moralistic and writer, but highlights his image of a humanist and what has been called moderate Spanish Renaissance, which combined the Christian tradition with Greek classical thinking. This is a treaty that fundamentally advocates a form of division of labor, heiress of the Aristotelian essentialist vision, in which the subordinate place that women must occupy with an eagerness to hide the true internal relations of domination is mitigated;This model of virtues of the Catholic woman is not only determined by her nature, by the justification provided by the argument of authority granted mainly to Aristotle in the Renaissance, but also by divine design.
The woman, in addition to being excluded from any public forum, apart from the areas of political decision, of the administration of property, of the forums where culture is created and receives, is also dispossessed of the right to the use of reason, the engine of themodernity. As a counterpart, it becomes the backbone of the family nucleus, transmitter of moral values, administrator of the family economy, maximum exponent in the production of services and to a lesser extent in the production of goods, educator of the children, but always under theguardianship of the husband or male of the house to which it must be delivered and supported. This situation of submission reflecting Fray Luis de León, has been the immovable and majority ideological model in Spain until the last third of the twentieMaternity as a maximum horizon of personal fulfillment for women and in the ideology of domesticity.
Evolution of the female condition in Spain from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day
The history of women is intimately linked to the history of feminist movements for two fundamental reasons;In the first place because they have served as a social change engine in pursuit of equal rights between men and women, and secondly because they have endowed women with the necessary theoretical and epistemological resources to make visible their own history and needs. The feminist struggle has allowed women to progressively be part of the political, economic, academic, administrative, cultural, etc., And they have also aroused interest in gender studies in all scientific areas. For all these reasons, let’s look at feminist movements that in Spain, during most of the last century, have caused the necessary changes so that the Spanish woman of the 21st century enjoy and possess enough tools to achieve the desired parity with themen.
Although the evolution of the feminist movement has developed in two stages fundamentally -the first since the mid -nineteenth century until the mid -20s and 30s of the twentieth century;The second from the sixties to the eighties, called the second wave of feminism-, when talking about Spanish feminism we must consider this same itinerary but with a small chronological lag, especially in what at the first stage refers. The reasons that would explain this delay are several;Geraldine m. Scalon (1990) points out three especially:
- A poor industrial development that entails the absence of a relevant and progressive middle class.
- The liberal model that is imposed after the old regime is characterized by the weakness of the parliamentary representative system.
- The relevant role played by the Catholic Church. In Protestant confession, women participated in religious philanthropic and social movements;This procured administrative and organizational experience, in addition to strengthening psychological characters – directing to the hostility that their public actions and self-confidence leads – in them the need for instruction and the right to vote. In the Spanish case, the Church was entrusted exclusively with the education of the well -off classes, promoting with it the differences between the two sexes and the assignment of women to the role of wife and mother.
All this linked to the high female illiteracy rates and the low access to the labor market delays the development of the feminist movement in Spain.
After the First World War, a series of demographic changes and economic hardship favor the access of middle -class women to work and academic life creating a receptive social basis;In addition, the virulence of international feminism ceases, softening the image of the feminist and aggressive feminist towards that of a responsible woman and rope. Thanks to these progress, consciousness among women is born that their social, legal and professional situation is very precarious.
In Spain, unlike the rest of Europe and the United States, a more social than political feminism develops in principle. As we have indicated above, the liberal system that is imposed in Spain is sustained on a formal constitutional system and a policy based on caciquismo, corruption and electoral fraud, which causes citizen distrust and growth of anarchist groups. Many social groups, before this panorama, move away from political participation. Among them, feminist groups put aside political claims for individual rights. As Mary Nash (1989) points out, a gender discourse based on the theory of sexual differentiation and the complementarity between the sexes -posted by Dr Gregorio Marañón -joins this climate of distrust -where it is maintained that women are notA lower being but different from male. Social equality is postulated from the difference where both sexes immersed in their tasks complement each other. This entails a sexual division of labor, where women are held at home, and a construction of the cultural identity of women from motherhood.
In spite of everything, although it was difficult for women to articulate an equal discourse, thanks to the theory of gender difference, a series of social and civil demands could be articulated to claim -Deducation and remunerated work mainly-. This would explain why figures such as Concepción Arenal and Emilia Pardo Bazán would focus their activism on the field of women’s education. It was not until the 1920s when thanks to the political situation, feminist political activism was enhanced and an interest in rethinking the concepts of citizenship and democracy.
Let’s take a brief tour of the variety of currents of historical feminism in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1909 the Catalan writer Dolors Monserdà adopted the term ‘feminist’ in her book Feminist Studio where she rejects the secular bases of international feminism and advocates a Catholic and nationalist reformism of conservative dyes. The nationalist cause led many Catalan bourgeois as the aforementioned Dolors Monserdà or Francesca Bonnemaison to underline the importance of women in the socialization of future generations in Catalan culture and tradition, and claim access to academic training sufficiently complete to perform such socialization;However, they accepted that the male exclusively was responsible for managing heritage and political life.
In the case of Basque nationalists, they came to organize under the Emakume Abertzale Batza association, but developed approaches that cannot be considered specifically as feminist.
At the national level, in October 1918 the National Association of Spanish Women (ANME) was created by María Espinosa de los Monteros, which sought to claim the classic budgets of Spanish patriotism in the face of peripheral nationalist demands.
From 1920 to social demands, political demands are joined. In this way, from the ANME and Benita Asas Manterola at the head, the review of the laws that relegated women to the family and their promotion in political life is requested, although restricting those public positions -Politics and trade union- That they were responsible for the interests of the female sex. In general, there is a translation from social and civic claims towards the direct claim of female suffrage. Outstanding feminist activists will be Carmen de Burgos, Clara Campoamor, Margarita Nelken, Victoria Kent or María Martínez Sierra. Highlight Clara Campoamor, lawyer and deputy of the Radical Party and that in 1931 as president of the suffragist organization, the Women’s Republican Union, defended the women’s suffrage in the debate of the Constituent Courts of the Republic.
The reforms that were achieved were caused by general political imperatives rather than by a specifically feminist pressure;For example, in the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, limited rights were granted to take advantage of the majority conservatism of the woman and ensure the gratitude of the same. Likewise, in the Constitution of the Second Republic, equality of civil and political rights is included because it was part of the democratic model with which the country was expected to modernize.
With the concession of the vote there was the weakening of the feminist movement;On the one hand, some of the most prolific activists joined political parties thinking that from that platform they could reach more benefits for the female cause. In addition, an embroled fight was unleashed by the left and right parties to obtain the support of women, creating female associations that lacked feminist ideology and subordinates to the interests of the party, and that are limited to cultural work, social assistance and social assistance andVoting.
Faced with this political ostracism, some women believed useful to create a political party as a transitory measure, until men reconsider the situation of women in their political parties;Even in 1936, some members of the Women’s Republican Union Group, founded by Clara Campoamor in 1931, requested a position for the election in the Popular Front that was denied them. Another measure was to bet on political neutrality, creating in January 1934 the independent female political association under the leadership of Julia Peguero, unfeasible neutrality on the other hand.
In summary, the first Spanish feminism disappeared victim from the struggles between left and rights and the imposition of the Franco regime after the Spanish Civil War.
In spite of everything, during the Francoist period there were some women who dared to theorize from the feminist perspective;Thus we have Maria Campo Alange that in 1948 he dared to publish the Secret War of the Sexes and some religious associations – Mujeres de AC, Marian and University Marian Congregations of the Teresian institutions – that constituted the University Friendship Association, where the bases were setof progressive Christian feminism. The main idea is that some women immersed in democratic opposition groups to the regime and from hiding, became aware of their specific problem and began to meet to state frequent objectives and organize action stratagems.
In the 70s there is a resurgence thanks to the theoretical identification of new elements that would propel feminist discourse;Some of these components were the identification of patriarchy as a cause of female oppression, the contributions of Marxism, its reinterpretation including the concept of gender and the awareness that the feminist struggle arises from an experience of oppression shared by all women independentlyof the social class, race or political position to which they are ascribed.
In Spain there are a series of changes that will prepare the land for feminist hatching in the 70s. An economic expansion is produced thanks to the commitment of the Franco regime with the capitalist advance;There is women’s access to the workplace due to a fall in birth rates;the rise of tourism, emigration and educational and cultural expansion;And finally, the arrival to
All these factors are synthesized in 1975;This is indicated by the UN as International Women’s Year and a Congress of Women’s Government Organizations in Mexico is celebrated. The organization of the events that were carried out during that year and the representation that was taken to Congress fell to the hands of the Women’s Section1, which encouraged many women to unite to replicate the official positions. A platform for women’s organizations was formed in Madrid, which organized the first days for the liberation of women -listed in December 1975 -, where a program of complaints and claims was presented, among which the decriminalization of the female adultery of the female adultery., the legalization of divorce and contraceptives, labor and salary equalization, etc. Several ideological trends were also glimpsed, depending on where the cause of female oppression was located: for radical feminists the cause was the patriarchal system and for socialist feminists the deceased was the capitalist system.
In 1976, the first Catalan Days of the Dona was organized in Barcelona and in 1979 the II Women’s State Conference was held in Granada;In both events there will be progressive wear and tear that will lead to a break, given the impossibility of the ideological differences of the different feminisms to be overcome. The reasons for these disagreements can be found in the peculiar situation in which Spain was immersed at that time;The democratic transition caused a context of double militancy for women – feminist and political – and the consequent dilemma regarding how the relationship with political parties should be.
In general, the general political struggle prevailed, since democratic achievement was an essential requirement for subsequent developments of the feminist movement. An example of dilemma was presented with the referendum on the Constitution (ratified on October 31, 1978);Here the feminists had to opt between consolidating democracy ratifying the Constitution or refusing to do so, due to the absence of references to the demands for them -birth or abortion control among others-.
As we saw in the first wave of feminism, the disinterest shown by the male members of the parties towards the female problem and the discrimination suffered by women in their own parties, made the need to organize autonomously arise. In this line, the Madrid feminist group were created, sponsored by lawyer Cristina Alberdi, and the party that
Franco’s Spain will aim to disseminate values and behavior patterns that restrict women to family and home, being able to develop assistance work outside the domestic sphere. This ideology was maintained and perpetuated through the WomenNationalsindicalism.
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