How Has The Role Of Women In Spain Changed Since Franco's Era?
How has the role of women in Spain changed since Franco’s era?
In this essay, I will be reflecting on what ways the role of women has changed in the Spanish society since Franco’s period ended in 1975. Before reaching a conclusion, I will be looking at women’s lifestyle during and after Franco’s dictatorship and moreover I will be exploring to what extent the gender equality in Spain has modified positively and negatively throughout the years.
General Francisco Franco was in power for 36 years and his nationalist dictatorship meant that he had sovereignty over everything concerning Spain, effectively including women. He introduced laws that restricted them to progress as they do now, laws so strong that meant that once married they became, what I would call, their husbands’ shadows. The Catholic Church seemed to be one of his major influences because being the Spanish main religion at the time, the state had to somehow involve Catholicism which was why contraception, abortion and divorce were all denied to women and marked as a crime even if undertaken as a result of domestic violence.
The stereotype that women’s main purposes were to be housewives and mothers were the reason why most of them didn’t get a good education. They were discouraged from higher education from a young age. I imagine that since men had the role to bring …show more content…
food to the table, most of them didn’t further their education themselves. Therefore if a woman were to be more knowledgeable than her own husband or father she would have more chances of earning more than him thus gaining her own financial independence. For this reason, Franco introduced a law that once a woman is married, she is to abandon her job to focus on fulfilling her purpose of mother and wife.
Edita Mas -López notes in her article ‘The Spanish woman in today’s democratic Spain’, how Society in Spain today is a society with a lot of ambiguity when it comes to women and their role in the family. Before it was very simple, there was only one place for women: home. Now we can see several generations of women who grew up during the Franco era, when women 's situation was awful and lacked any law. These women have experienced many changes in their lives and now live with freedom they never had. They have gone from a state with no right to leave the country without the permission of their husband, to a state with the same rights as men.
It is difficult to digest these changes and we can tell by looking at villages especially, where the changes occur more slowly, there are more housewives, couples marry at an early age and we also see that patriarchy still has an influence on their lifestyle. Nevertheless, the last thirty years have been and still are years of change. Mas Lopez argues about the importance of that change by highlighting the unexpected gains that women have achieved, and notes that it has not been an easy road and there is still a long way to go before reaching a complete state of equality. She sees the changes of the most important laws as the basis to make patriarchy disappear.
Josefina Cuesta Bustillo adds to the debate facing the precarious situation of women in the same way in the ‘History of Women in Twentieth Century Spain’. Josefina also mentions the decades of the eighties and nineties as being especially fruitful decades where Spanish women gained many advantages that helped them move forward, but this progression meant that society had to adapt. This situation caused problems at first but it was slowly realized that various amendments had to be made. Companies had to employ equally, regardless of gender, they also needed to provide nurseries and homes for the elderly.
Esping -Andersen said in his 2007 article ‘The Need For a New Family Policy’ that "the lack of accessible childcare means that mothers can not work" and he also added that Spain will never become "an attractive and competitive society to live in" if women cannot combine motherhood and occupation. This suggests that the progression also influenced the family situation negatively because it became harder than it was to take care of the family while having a job as they had to balance the two full time duties.
Soledad Miguel reports that in 1975 Spain had the highest birth rate in Europe, however twenty years later had the lowest, a clear sign that women were engaged in other things, such as study and work.
Many professional women recognized that they had a recurrent consciousness, always with the dissatisfaction of feeling that when they are at work they are failing their family and maternal duties but when they are busy with family feel they fail in their work. This shows the effect of women’s role in the past because they still feel that they are designated to taking care of their children’s needs at home and, therefore, stopped having
them.
But where does all this change leave men? Corsi points out that the image of masculinity is something that has been passed down " from generation to generation " and that kind of man still exists not only in the Spanish society but also in the rest of world. With the traditional culture of the man being the protector of his family and the person who earns the money to take care of it, Spain is a country where machismo is still present. With the woman earning as well, sometimes more than the man, we see that the man feels threatened by the thought of becoming inferior to women and not having any control over them.
With the emancipation of women, slowly gaining its independence, there are many men who unfortunately cannot control this new feminine freedom and this results in the abuse of women which is a major problem in Spain today. Seventy women die each year from this cause, and domestic violence is increasing. For example, statistics show an increase of 22.97% between 2000 and 1997 (Álvarez Reguera, 2007). In his article on domestic violence Reguera comments on the loss of power of men. According to her, a problem arises when someone is released and another person loses power. In the Spanish case women are being released and the men that are losing power often show that loss through domestic violence.
It is true that they saw the disappearance of many laws that prevented them from marriage, travel, study, owning a property, without the consent of their husband or father. However, we must keep in consideration that the liberal regime may have legislatively liberated women, but has not made them immune to domination, employment discrimination and domestic abuse.
Feminism has come to influence programs of all political parties especially the left, but also amongst the right-wing parties. We can see that the right formations, which usually bring together the most conservative sectors of society and therefore are more frontally opposed to feminist claims, have come to accept many of the left-wing ideas and it seems clear that they resort to it because today it is an inescapable thought to have a social feel for the rights of women. Likewise, feminism has also managed to influence the unions as they have become aware of the need to address issues such as sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Today more attention is paid to these issues.
Overall, I believe that with its bullfights and other traditions that are so deep in the soul of the people, Spain will be a difficult country to change, but there is potential to do so. Lately, we have seen women working as bullfighters, something that would have been impossible a few years ago. This means that stereotypes created in Franco’s era are gradually disappearing. Although social customs show that machismo, which prevents women to live with the same rights as men despite the state laws, still exists in Spain today. However, the good thing is that in Spain there is a clear awareness that the country needs a change in this regard. The Spaniards see that a lot of progress has been made in only a few years and, thus rely on a much larger change in the near future.
REFERENCES
A Generation of Men Raised by Women (2010). http://www.artofmanliness.com
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999). Social foundations of post-industrial economies.
Esping-Anderson, G. (2007). The Need For a New Family Policy’
Edita Mas –López. ‘The Spanish woman in today’s democratic Spain’
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Batalova, J. and Cohen, P.N. (2002). Premarital cohabitation and housework: Couples in cross-national perspective. Journal of Marriage and the Family
Clarkberg, M., Stolzberg, R. and White, L. (1995). Attitudes, values and entrance into cohabitational versus marital unions. Social Forces
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999). Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spanish society after the democratic transition. http://en.wikipedia.org/
The changing role of women in Spain. http://www.thespanishblog.com/2012/03
20th C Spain. Overview: Politics. http://www.spainthenandnow.com/
In this essay, I will be reflecting on what ways the role of women has changed in the Spanish society since Franco’s period ended in 1975. Before reaching a conclusion, I will be looking at women’s lifestyle during and after Franco’s dictatorship and moreover I will be exploring to what extent the gender equality in Spain has modified positively and negatively throughout the years.
General Francisco Franco was in power for 36 years and his nationalist dictatorship meant that he had sovereignty over everything concerning Spain, effectively including women. He introduced laws that restricted them to progress as they do now, laws so strong that meant that once married they became, what I would call, their husbands’ shadows. The Catholic Church seemed to be one of his major influences because being the Spanish main religion at the time, the state had to somehow involve Catholicism which was why contraception, abortion and divorce were all denied to women and marked as a crime even if undertaken as a result of domestic violence.
The stereotype that women’s main purposes were to be housewives and mothers were the reason why most of them didn’t get a good education. They were discouraged from higher education from a young age. I imagine that since men had the role to bring …show more content…
food to the table, most of them didn’t further their education themselves. Therefore if a woman were to be more knowledgeable than her own husband or father she would have more chances of earning more than him thus gaining her own financial independence. For this reason, Franco introduced a law that once a woman is married, she is to abandon her job to focus on fulfilling her purpose of mother and wife.
Edita Mas -López notes in her article ‘The Spanish woman in today’s democratic Spain’, how Society in Spain today is a society with a lot of ambiguity when it comes to women and their role in the family. Before it was very simple, there was only one place for women: home. Now we can see several generations of women who grew up during the Franco era, when women 's situation was awful and lacked any law. These women have experienced many changes in their lives and now live with freedom they never had. They have gone from a state with no right to leave the country without the permission of their husband, to a state with the same rights as men.
It is difficult to digest these changes and we can tell by looking at villages especially, where the changes occur more slowly, there are more housewives, couples marry at an early age and we also see that patriarchy still has an influence on their lifestyle. Nevertheless, the last thirty years have been and still are years of change. Mas Lopez argues about the importance of that change by highlighting the unexpected gains that women have achieved, and notes that it has not been an easy road and there is still a long way to go before reaching a complete state of equality. She sees the changes of the most important laws as the basis to make patriarchy disappear.
Josefina Cuesta Bustillo adds to the debate facing the precarious situation of women in the same way in the ‘History of Women in Twentieth Century Spain’. Josefina also mentions the decades of the eighties and nineties as being especially fruitful decades where Spanish women gained many advantages that helped them move forward, but this progression meant that society had to adapt. This situation caused problems at first but it was slowly realized that various amendments had to be made. Companies had to employ equally, regardless of gender, they also needed to provide nurseries and homes for the elderly.
Esping -Andersen said in his 2007 article ‘The Need For a New Family Policy’ that "the lack of accessible childcare means that mothers can not work" and he also added that Spain will never become "an attractive and competitive society to live in" if women cannot combine motherhood and occupation. This suggests that the progression also influenced the family situation negatively because it became harder than it was to take care of the family while having a job as they had to balance the two full time duties.
Soledad Miguel reports that in 1975 Spain had the highest birth rate in Europe, however twenty years later had the lowest, a clear sign that women were engaged in other things, such as study and work.
Many professional women recognized that they had a recurrent consciousness, always with the dissatisfaction of feeling that when they are at work they are failing their family and maternal duties but when they are busy with family feel they fail in their work. This shows the effect of women’s role in the past because they still feel that they are designated to taking care of their children’s needs at home and, therefore, stopped having
them.
But where does all this change leave men? Corsi points out that the image of masculinity is something that has been passed down " from generation to generation " and that kind of man still exists not only in the Spanish society but also in the rest of world. With the traditional culture of the man being the protector of his family and the person who earns the money to take care of it, Spain is a country where machismo is still present. With the woman earning as well, sometimes more than the man, we see that the man feels threatened by the thought of becoming inferior to women and not having any control over them.
With the emancipation of women, slowly gaining its independence, there are many men who unfortunately cannot control this new feminine freedom and this results in the abuse of women which is a major problem in Spain today. Seventy women die each year from this cause, and domestic violence is increasing. For example, statistics show an increase of 22.97% between 2000 and 1997 (Álvarez Reguera, 2007). In his article on domestic violence Reguera comments on the loss of power of men. According to her, a problem arises when someone is released and another person loses power. In the Spanish case women are being released and the men that are losing power often show that loss through domestic violence.
It is true that they saw the disappearance of many laws that prevented them from marriage, travel, study, owning a property, without the consent of their husband or father. However, we must keep in consideration that the liberal regime may have legislatively liberated women, but has not made them immune to domination, employment discrimination and domestic abuse.
Feminism has come to influence programs of all political parties especially the left, but also amongst the right-wing parties. We can see that the right formations, which usually bring together the most conservative sectors of society and therefore are more frontally opposed to feminist claims, have come to accept many of the left-wing ideas and it seems clear that they resort to it because today it is an inescapable thought to have a social feel for the rights of women. Likewise, feminism has also managed to influence the unions as they have become aware of the need to address issues such as sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Today more attention is paid to these issues.
Overall, I believe that with its bullfights and other traditions that are so deep in the soul of the people, Spain will be a difficult country to change, but there is potential to do so. Lately, we have seen women working as bullfighters, something that would have been impossible a few years ago. This means that stereotypes created in Franco’s era are gradually disappearing. Although social customs show that machismo, which prevents women to live with the same rights as men despite the state laws, still exists in Spain today. However, the good thing is that in Spain there is a clear awareness that the country needs a change in this regard. The Spaniards see that a lot of progress has been made in only a few years and, thus rely on a much larger change in the near future.
REFERENCES
A Generation of Men Raised by Women (2010). http://www.artofmanliness.com
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999). Social foundations of post-industrial economies.
Esping-Anderson, G. (2007). The Need For a New Family Policy’
Edita Mas –López. ‘The Spanish woman in today’s democratic Spain’
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Batalova, J. and Cohen, P.N. (2002). Premarital cohabitation and housework: Couples in cross-national perspective. Journal of Marriage and the Family
Clarkberg, M., Stolzberg, R. and White, L. (1995). Attitudes, values and entrance into cohabitational versus marital unions. Social Forces
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999). Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spanish society after the democratic transition. http://en.wikipedia.org/
The changing role of women in Spain. http://www.thespanishblog.com/2012/03
20th C Spain. Overview: Politics. http://www.spainthenandnow.com/