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The Cinderella Complex: Narrating Spanish Women's History, the Home and Visions ofEquality: Developing New MarginsAuthor(s): Robina MohammadSource: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jun.,2005), pp. 248-261
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3804522 .
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The
Cinderella
complex
- narrating
S p a n i s h
w o m e n s
h i s t o r y
t h h o m
n d
v i s i o n s
o
equal i ty:
eveloping
n w
margins
Robina
Mohammad
This paper examines
the development
of feminism
in
Spain
within the
context
of
political
transformations.
It
focuses
on one
particular
strand
of
feminist
thinking:
/equality
feminism'.
The paper traces the
evolution
of
equality
feminism and
its
institutionalization,
supported
by the production
and dissemination
of a
feminist
history of the Franquista dictatorship (1936-1939). Yet, under scrutiny such narratives
maintain
a
silence on the social,
political and geographical
diversity
of
women's
experiences
prior to, during and
beyond
the
Franquista
dictatorship. Drawing
on
women's
oral testimonies
(recorded
in the city of Mdlaga,
Andalucia)
the
paper
animates
the
silences
of this feminist
history
in
Spain
and the limits of state
feminist
ideology.
key
words feminism state
equality
hegemony
ideology
silences
Mdlaga
South
Asian
StudiesProgramme,National
University
of
Singapore
email:
sasrm~nus.edu.sg
revised manuscript received 22 December 2004
Introduction
In Spain, a
strand of feminism
known
as equality
feminism
has
become institutionalized
in
the
state
apparatus. This paper
considers the
implications of
this for
workingclass
women. In
particular, t specifies
equality
feminism's
classifications
of labour
as
paid and
unpaid, public
and
private,
masculine
and feminine and examines their socio-spatial and
political
underpinnings
and
consequences.
Equality
feminism
(or socialist
feminism
as
it is
sometimes
referred
to) developed in
Spain
in the late
1960s
against the
backdrop of the
Franquista
dictatorship
(1939-1975) and was
heavily
influenced by
feminist
scholars
Betty Friedan and
Simone De Beauvoir.
After
the death of General
Franco
in
1975, the
dictatorship
volved into a liberal
democracy,a
process
which saw
the
curtailment of
the most
radical
currents
involved
in the
struggle
for
democracy
and the
reinstitution of
the bourbon
dynasty
with
King Juan
Carlos as
head of state.
Under pressure
from
equality
feminists,
the
socialist
government
that
came
to power
in
a
landslide
victory
in the
1982 elections
established
a state
department
for
women.
The
Instituto
de la Mujer (Institute
for
Women)
was
given the
mandate
to
develop
gender
equality.
Spanish
State Feminism's
(SSF)
govern-
ance
of the gender
'problem'
is coherent
with
the
liberal'
ideology
of the
democratic
state
of which
it
is a part. Its location within the state has provided
equality
feminism
with a
powerful
platform
from
which to disseminate
(and
universalize)
its
vision
of
what
counts
as women's
oppression,
the
con-
ceptualization
of women's equality
and how
the
latter
might be
achieved.
The
distinction
of public/private,
defined
in
spatial
terms
as 'la casa
o la
calle'
(literally,
the
house or
the street),
that underpinned
Franquismo's
gendered
ideology
is
also
key
to SSF discourse.
I
examine
how
this distinction,
aligned
with the
modern/traditional
binary,
became
central to
hege-
monic feminist
representations
of the home. For
TransInst Br
GeogrNS 30 248-261 2005
ISSN 0020-2754
?
Royal
Geographical Society (with The
Institute of British Geographers)
2005
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The
Cinderellacomplex
this I
draw on
two
interviews with
feminists
work-
ing
within the
municipal
state women's
office in
Malaga, the
Delegacion
Municipal de
la
Mujer,
and
two
from the
regional state
women's
office
in
Andalucia,
the
Instituto
Andaluz de la
Mujer. I
supplement these interviews with an extensive
study
of
literatures
(many
of them
produced
and/
or
funded by the state
offices) that relate to and
inform
the
production
and
circulation of
everyday
narratives about
women's
place
in
Spanish
society.
Then,
drawing
on an
in-depth
intergenerational
study
of 44
working-class
women aged
between 19
and
72,2 located in
Malaga
Town
(Andalucia),'
I
consider
the extent to which
women's
subjectivities
have
been
produced
within SSF
discourse with
reference
to
understandings of
gender
equality,
freedom, home and work. I show how SSF's con-
ceptualization of
gender
equality
serves to
valorize
some
women while
marginalizing others.
Pursuing
what
Squires (1999)
refers to as
a
'strategy of
inclusion',
SSFseeks to
make women
equal to men.
In
this vision,
equality
between men and
women
requires not only
the
development of
equality of
opportunities but also
the
production of
a
model
of
Spanish
womanhood
capable
of
taking up these
opportunities. Thus
part
of
its
aim
involves the
transformation
of
women.
However,
this
strategy
leaves the
structures within
which
inequalities
are
produced unquestioned.
Retaining a centre
supports
a
periphery.
Those women who have
the
capacity
for
achieving equality
according
to
SSF's vision
are
centred,
but
those
who
refuse
it
or
those less
cap-
able
of
this
transformation, such as the infirm
and/
or
disabled
women
unable
to
engage
in
paid
work,
remain
relegated
to the
periphery.
I
argue
that
in
keeping with
liberal
ideology, SSF
discourse on
the
one hand
promotes
women's
autonomy, free-
dom and
liberty. Yet
on
the other
hand,
it
limits
and
controls, by
prescribing
a
particular model of
womanhood and valorizing it over others. Finally,
the
focus of SSF
discourse,
in
keeping
with
certain
hegemonic strands
of
Anglo-American 'second
wave'
feminisms,
has been almost
exclusively
on
the
inequities produced
by gender.
But
as
critiques
of
the
latter
have
pointed
out,
the
man/woman
binary that this
privileges has
generated
new
oppressive
fictions
even
as
it
has
sought
to
address
existing
ones. The structure
of the
paper
is
as
fol-
lows:
I
begin by
tracing Friedan and
De
Beauvoir's
influence
on
feminist agendas
in
Spain
(Amoros
1986; Folguera
1988) and
the
emergence
and
insti-
tutionalization
of
equality
feminism.
I
then
discuss
249
SSF's post-dictatorship
re-narration
of
Franquista
history,
within a liberal
framework, against
which
women's equality
has been
conceptualized.
Draw-
ing on interview
data
I examine
the extent
to
which
this history
as a collective
memory has been
pro-
ductive of women's subjectivities. From the basis
of respondents'
experiences
I
highlight
the
partial
nature
of this collective
memory.
Puertas adentro4
(behind
closed
doors):
queens
and/or slaves
of the home.
Equality
feminism
in
Spain
[The]existence
of a regime
which denied
citizens virtually
all forms
of meeting
and
association
made it. ..
[difficult
to organize
resistance
movements
in
the late-1960s
and so] much more difficult for the ideas and actions
launched
by women
in other parts
of Europe and
North
America
to catch on
in Spain. (Threfall
1985, 45)
Equality
feminism
developed
within the women's
movement
gathered
pace
as
part
of an
oppositional
movement
in
Franquista Spain
in
the late
1960s.
Although
the anti-democratic
environment
aimed
to
inhibit all forms
of
opposition,
socio-economic
transformations
encouraged
the
new
generation
of
women
to
question
their
own
position
in
Spanish
society.
As Escario
et al. note:
For the first time, women were reflecting more on their
rights
than their duties
and obligations.
(1996,
50; see
also
Morcillo
1988;
Scanlon
1990)
Internationally,
in
the
Anglo-American
world a
second
wave
of feminism
was
at
its
height.
In
the
United
States
civil
right
struggles
were being
fought
and
won;
closer
to
home students were
agitating
in
Paris,
France.
In
Spain,
the
numbers
of
feminist
texts
that had
been
filtering
in and
circulating
llegally
since
the
early
1960s
(Borreguero
et
al.
1986;
Morcillo 1988;
Scanlon
1990)
were on the
rise, encouraging women to recognize as illusionary
the choices
offered
them
by
the
Franquista
regime
(LUpez-Accotto
1999).
These
texts
were to
have
an
important
influence
not
only amongst
feminists but
all women
who
in
those
years
began,
for
the first
time,
to feel a
sense
of rebellion
against
their
traditional
role.
(Escario
et al.
1996, 50)
Most
notable
of these texts
were
Betty
Friedan's
The
feminist
mystique first
published
1963)
and
Simone
De Beauvoir's
Le
deuxieme
exe
(The
second
sex,
first
published
in
1949) (Thornham
2001).
A
Spanish
copy
of
the latter
found its
way
into
Spain
from
Argentina
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250
in 1962.
Circulating
clandestinely,
as Cafias
notes
in
an
article
commemorating the
fiftieth
anniversary
of
the
book,
it
quickly became known
as
the
feminist
bible. It
was passed
from hand
to
hand.
[I]n it many Spanish women encountered a profound
reflection
(with
respect to
the
condition of
women) on
what
they already
knew
intuitively.
(1999a,
32;
my
translation.
See also
L6pez
Pardina 1999)
What
was
already
known
intuitively
was
further
developed
and
formulated
through the
lens
offered
by
Betty
Friedan.
Friedan's The
feminist
mystique
(1963),
focusing on
the
experience of
housewives in
the
United
States in the
1950s,
argued that
patri-
archal
American
society saw
the
roles
of
housewife
and
mother
as the
'natural'
destiny of
women
because of theirbiologicalcapacity for reproduction.
This
destiny is
further
naturalized
by the
seductive-
ness
of the
ideologies of
love
and
romance
circulated
through
the
media,
promoted
by
capitalist
consump-
tion
as
well as
by
'experts' in
medicine
and
health
guiding
women towards
particular
feminine
ideals
(see
Jacobs
Brumberg
1998).
Friedan
(1963) argued
that
this
undermined
women's ambition
to
excel
in
the
public,
professional
worlds,
drawing them
instead
towards
the
limited and
alienating
private domain
of
the
home
through
marriage and
motherhood.
Writing at
the height
of
Fordism
when
the dis-
tinction between the
spaces of paid and
domestic
labour
was
most
marked, Friedan
contrasts
both
the
forms
of
labour
-
domestic and
paid, as well
as
the
sites
in
which these
activities are
under-
taken.
She
points
out that
against
the
tedious
monotony
of
domestic
labour,
undertaken
for love
and
largely
unrecognized
or
recognized
in
ways
that
do
not
count, paid
work is
mentally
stimulat-
ing.
Moreover,
it
has
marked
temporal
boundaries,
offers
a
wage
and
financial
autonomy,
promotion
and a
recognized
status.
Yet
for Friedan
crucially
the site of domestic work itself - the home - is par-
ticularly
alienating
and
disempowering. The home
removes
women
from the
apparently
transparent
public
sphere
and
makes them
less
visible.
They
are
disenfranchised by
their exclusion and
invisi-
bility
from
the
arenas
of
institutional
politics
and
government,
and
the labour
market,
denying
them
full
participatory
citizenship.
These
ideas
found
resonance
in
a
Spain
in
which a
national
form
of
Catholicism, as
the state
ideology, per-
suaded
boys
and
girls
towards
separate destinies
that
were also
spatialized.
The 'natural'
destiny
for
men
was the
public
world, and
for
women,
the pri-
RobinaMohammad
vate
space of the
home and the
twin roles of wife
and
mother (Riera
and
Valenciano
1991).
However,
feminist
currents
in
Spain
were divided over
what
counted
as
oppression.
For example,
in contrast
to
equality
feminism,
difference feminism
views 'the
spaces of [women's] personal, lived experience as
the only legitimate
starting-point'
(BrooksbankJones
1997,
11). Difference feminism
celebrates
the spaces
of
the
home,
of
the
'vida cotidiana'
(everyday
life),
the very spaces
that
equality
feminism
sought
to
negotiate
women's
release
from.
Feminist
currents
were
also divided
over the
means for developing
women's empowerment.
From
equality
to state
feminism
McBride Stetson and Mazur reflect on how
The
most
striking
consequence
of over 25 years
of
women's movement
activism has been
the
array
of
institutional
arrangements
inside democratic
states
devoted to
women's policy questions.
(1995, 1)
However, feminists
have
been unable to
come
to
any agreement
about
the role of the state
in
the
achievement
of their objectives.
Marxist
and Radical
feminists
view the
state as
an
instrument
of
capitalism
and
patriarchy respectively
(see
Elshtain
1983;
MacKinnon 1989).
In
the
Spanish
context,
radical
feminists regard
man as the oppressor,
rather
than a patriarchal, socio-political-economic
system,
thus they
ruled out the
possibility
of col-
laboration
on
projects
of
resistance
that
involved
an
engagement
with
institutional politics.
Differ-
ence feminists,
who
privilege
women's knowledges
and
viewpoints,
believed
that
any
engagement
with formal political
structures would
inevitably
and irrevocably
transform feminists themselves,
compromising
the commitment
to their
own
and
collective
autonomy.
By contrast,equality
feminism's
liberal view does not see the state as an instrument
of
oppression,
but rather
as
a
facility
that can be
used
by any
group
able
to
develop
the
political
capital
to
promote
its own vision
of the world.
State
power
can be harnessed
to
develop equality
between men
and women
(Riera
and Valenciano
1991).
It
is
this
position
that enabled
equality
feminism
to achieve
hegemony
over alternative
feminist
visions
through
its
institutionalization
with
the
establishment
of
the Instituto de
la
Mujer (the state
women's office)
in
1983.
Taking
their cue from
the national
state, regional
and
municipal
authorities
also set up women's
offices.
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The Cinderella
complex
In
Andalucia,
for
example, the
regional
state
women's
department, the
Instituto
Andaluz de la
Mujer,
was formalized
in 1988.
Mdlaga's
Delegaci6n
Municipal de la
Mujer was
established
more
recently in 1994.
At this point I should note that by SSF I do
not
simply refer to
the formal
political
apparatus
of the
state, but to
the network of
agencies and
technologies
through
which
governance is achieved.
Governance
draws together and
produces
'a profu-
sion
of
shifting alliances between
diverse authorities'
(Rose and
Miller 1992, 174),
all those
involved in
knowledge
production,
including
academics, jour-
nalists,
teachers,
medical and
health
authorities,
experts
on
populations, the
physical
and
social
environment,
industry and
economy. Such
authori-
ties form a complex web that imbricates state and
non-state
actors
in
such a
way that it blurs
the dis-
tinction
between
state and civil
society. Fentress
and
Wickham argue
that 'social
groups
construct
their own
images of
the world by
establishing an
agreed
version of the
past' (1992,
ix-x) achieved
through
research and
knowledge
production. Thus
funding research on
gender issues and
dissemina-
tion of
the findings is
key to
governing the problem
of
gender
inequality.
So, Lambea Pefia
notes
how
the
Instituto Andaluz
de la
Mujer started business
'with a
study of the
social situation
of Andalucian
women in order to diagnose reality' (1999, 24);
the
Instituto de
la Mujer also
stresses the
need 'to
make a
reliable diagnosis of
the situation'
(1997,
17).
Connected by a
shared vision,
and an informal
commitment
to cooperation
and
coordination
of
initiatives,
state women's
offices have
at their
disposal
extensive
technologies to
mould Spanish
womanhood in
ways that
parallel the
dictatorship.
The Instituto
de
la
Mujer's
Equality
Plan
stresses
that
education
is the basic
instrument
to
achieve
equality
of
opportunity
...
an
essential element for the
autonomy
of
women,
so
they
are able
to
develop
their own
opinions
...
(Instituto
de la
Mujer
1997, 15)
Women
must
develop their 'own
opinions',
but
must
do so
in
accordance
with
equality feminism's
vision, so the
Proposal for Action
26
in
the
Instituto
Andaluz
de la
Mujer's (1995)
Equality Plan
(current
at
the
time of
writing) calls for:
Campaigns
of awareness and
training
in
non sexist
orientation
[to
be]
directed to
families
and
students
with
the
objective
of
transforming
their
attitudes
to
their future
choice of
profession.
251
State
women's
offices
draw
on experts in
a
range
of
fields
to direct
women.
Both
the
Instituto
Andaluz
de
la
Mujer
and
the Instituto
de
la
Mujer
publish
extensive
material to
inform
and
guide
women,
ranging from
books
(produced
from
a variety
of
disciplinary locations) to free guides and booklets
advising
women on
a range
issues such
as
em-
ployment
(for example,
a guide to
reconciling
family
and working
life), domestic
violence,
sexual
health
and
educational
choices.
At
the same time,
their involvement
in
the
production
of knowledges
allows state
women's
offices
a
privileged
role
in
the production
of a collective
memory
of
women's
history
which
acts as
a basis for
the formulation of
gender
equality
programmes
and
provides
legitimation
for
equality
feminism.
Re-narrating
Franquista
Spain:
women
as 'other'
Fentressand
Wickham
argue that
individual memory
becomes
transformed
into a social
or collective
memory 'essentially
by
talking about
it'
(1992,
ix-x).
Yet
it
is
not simply
having
a voice
that is sig-
nificant
in this process,
but being
heard.
It
is the
narratives
of
the privileged,
of
those
who have the
status
and
resources,
to
circulate,
normalize and
universalize particular
knowledges
or versions
of the
past.
At
the
same
time as Summerfield
points
out,
local and particular
accounts
[of
the past]
cannot escape
the
conceptual
definitional
effects
of
powerful
public
representations
...
[thus
p]ersonal
narratives
draw
on
the
generalised
subject
available
in discourse
to
con-
struct the particular
personal
subject. (1998,
15)
Thus, for
young women,
public
representations
act
as a memory
of the Franquista
years.
Yet
powerful
public
representations
also
work on
the
memories
of older
women
who
have lived
experience
of
the
Franquista years. The collective memory prompts
and
guides
recollections,
infusing
and
enhancing
personal
memories
of
lived
experiences.
It
is able
to animate
and
re-configure
recollections
into
new
constellations,
endowing
experiences
with
new
meanings.
At
times
it
may
even
overwrite those
memories.
Thus the
act of remembering
is
highly
ideological.
Lorde
Enders,
with reference
to
historiography,
notes
how
after the end
of the
dictatorship hegem-
onic
power
belonged
to the centre
and
liberal
left.
The '[f]ormer
winners were
now losers,
and their
story
rested
in
the
hands
of their
political
enemies'
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252
(1999, 389).
It is in this
context
that
re-narrations,
whether
self-consciously
propounding
equality fem-
inism
or
otherwise, have a
tendency to
conceive
the
dictatorship as a
regime that
disrupted
Spain's
'natural'
progression from
'tradition'
to
'modernity'
with profound implications for women. Women's
distinctiveness
and
differences
from men
were
reinforced by a
dictatorship,
ideologically commit-
ted to
'tradition'.
Under the
command of
General
Franco,
Nationalists seized
power in
1939 and
emerged
victorious
in
a
bloody
civil
war fought
against the
democratically
elected,
liberal left
regime
of the
Second
Republic
(1931-1936).
In this
narration the
Second
Republic
becomes a
regime
that
liberated women
from tradition to
modernity.
Alted, for
example, notes
the
'favourable climate'
for women, during the Republicand even during the
Civil War
in
the Republican zone. This
'translated
into a
series of
conquests on
three
fronts:
juridical
equality with men ...
equality
of
opportunities
with
respect
to
education5 ...
[and]
protective labour
legislation...' (1991,
301). During this
period
women
were
granted
suffrage.
Moreover,
they were to be
liberatedfrom the
home
through the
divorce legisla-
tion
(Moxon-Browne
1989). It is against
these
Repub-
lican reforms
that
the
Franquista egime is
constructed
as a
'return to
the past';
'returning
women'
(Aline
Barrachina
1991, 211;
see also Carerra
Sudrez
and
Vinuela Suirez 2001) to the home, pushing women,
back from
'modernity' to 'tradition'
given
that
the
ideology of
the
[Franquistalregime with
respect
to
women
was
based on the exaltation of
their traditional
roles of
wife and
mother
confined to
their homes.
(Riera and
Valenciano 1991,
40)
Thus the
dictatorship
reversed the
progressive
re-
forms
made
under the
Republican
regime.
National
Catholicism6
provided
an
ideological
framework
for the
reproduction
of
the nation
(Nash
2000).
It
put the Catholic family, characterized by gender
divisions
and
hierarchy,
at the base of
Franquista
society,
as the
vehicle for a
conservative
national
regeneration.As
the
preamble to the
Labour Charter
of
1938
stated,
the
family
is the
'primary natural
and
basic
unit
of
society
and at the
same time
a
moral
institution'
(quoted in
Del
Campo
1991, 88).
Historically
speaking,
the
relegation of women
to the
home, as studies
have
shown, is not new.
In
Spain
'[t]he home
was a
feminine
space, [that
was]
completely
enclosed' (Ortega
L6pez 1988,
43).
Spanish
women,
as
women
elsewhere in
Europe
and beyond, were directed towards the home less
Robina
Mohammad
by
the state
and
more
by
economic necessity.
In
this sense,
marriage
acted
as a
refuge,
a tactic
for
survival (Scanlon
1986).
The
significance
of
mar-
riage
in
turn
imposed on women a life enclosed
behind
the walls of
the house
[which
they
left only]
for
pious
visits
to
the
Church; [other
than
that they
remained
within
the
four
walls of
the home]
hidden
from the view
of strangers,
in the
Arabic mode
... (OrtegaL6pez
1988, 43)
Marriage
not
only
naturalized
the
home as the
place
of
married women
through
their
roles as
housewives
and
mothers,
but it
also
prepared
the
ground
to contain
women,
not
yet
married,
to the
space
of
the
home
and reinforce
the worlds
beyond
it
as
essentially
masculine.
Catholicism
stressed
the centrality
of
women's
virginity/heterosexual
purity to marriage which became a measure of
women's
value in the
marriage
market.
In turn
this encouraged
constraints
on
single
women's
geographical
and
temporal
mobility.
At this
point
it is important to
bear
in mind
that the
Second
Republic, despite
legalizing
divorce,
did not
seek
to
address
in
any
substantial,
material
way
women's
economic dependency
on
marriage.
But the collective
memory foregrounds
the
ways
in
which
the Franquista
state sought
to
retain
women
in
the
home
through
a
variety
of direct and
indirect measures. As Scanlon points out
'La
mujer
de su casa'
[the
women
of the
house]
was
an integral part
of
Catholic
and traditional
Spain
that
Republic[an
policies]
had intended
to destroy
and
which
the
Nationalists endeavoured
to restore.
(1986,
337)
For
this the
Franquista
regime
drew on
the
Seccion
Feminina (the
Franquista
state's
de facto women's
office)
which
acted
as a
'political
instrument to
organise
women and
to transmit
the
thinking
and
values
of
the
new
state'
(Riera
and
Valenciano 1991,
43).
More specifically
its
role
is remembered
as one
of 'exhort~ingi .
..
women to reduce themselves to the
home
and to
the
Church'
(Pardo
2000,
dust
jacket).
Franquista policies
encouraged
women to leave
paid
work
upon
marriage,
and to
have
more chil-
dren.
From
1942,
women
employees
in the
public
sector
were offered
a
carrot,
'la
dote',
a financial
gift,
to leave
paid
work
upon
marriage.
'Once confined
[within
the home] they
were much
easier
to
control'
(Carbayo
Abeng6zar
1998, 35).
Married women
could
only legally
engage
in
paid
work
with
the
formal
permission
of their
husbands.
In
addition,
legislation
was
put
in
place to
bind women more
closely
to the home through motherhood. On the
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The
Cinderella
omplex
one
hand,
the
regime
called for
sexual
abstinence
and
was
vigilant
against the
sin of
solitary
sexual
pleasures
for
daughters in
the
parental
home
(see
Ortero
1999b). On
the
other,
as
wives, it
insisted on
their
participation in
conjugal
relations for
the pur-
poses of procreation. The regime's plan to increase
population
numbers saw
the
re-establishment of
Mother's
Day
(Ortero
1999a).
Women
were
reminded
that
'making
Spaniards
makes Spain
great'
(Seccidn
femenina,
quoted
in
Ortero
1999a,
111).
Pro-natalist
policies
were put in
place by
a
regime
that
'[riejected
[birth
control]
in a
rhetoric
that
chastised
the moral
decadence of
the
Republican
period'
(Nash
2000,
298). The
sale,
purchase, adver-
tising and
use of
contraception was
prohibited and
abortion
was
criminalized. At
the
same time
the
establishmentof the FamilySubsidy in 1938(offered
on a
sliding
scale
to
family
heads,
usually
male)
was a
measure to
persuade
women to
have
chil-
dren.
General
Franco's
own
ministers had
to set an
example to
the
nation, so
they were
all
fathers of
numerous
children (de
Miguel
1976).
These
policies
also
sought
to
ensure
that
wives
and
mothers
from
poor
families would
not be
forced
by
the burden
of
poverty to
enter
the labour
market
(de
Miguel
1976;
Nash 1999
2000).
A
wife's
engagement in
for-
mal
paid
work,
however, was
further
undermined
by
the
threat of
withdrawing the
family
subsidy
from her husband
(Roig 1989).
These
measures
were
introduced at
least
in
part
to
contain
women to the
feminine
sphere.
But
as
Shubert
notes, it
was
middle- and
upper-class
women,
far
more that
working-class
women who
'found
their world
and
especially
their contacts
with
men
severely
restricted'
(1992,
214).
It
is
in
this
context
that
Friedan's
analysis found
common-
sense
appeal
amongst
educated,middle-class
women,
in
a
country
that
until
the
economic
miracle
of
the
1960s
was
sharply
polarized
in
socio-economic
terms. It is against this narration of Franquista
policies that
equality feminists
identified 'the
two
great
problems that ...
had
to
[be]
confront[ed
-],
matrimonyand
maternity'
(Carbayo
Abeng6zar
1998,
25).
Sociologist
Ma
Angeles Duran
reminds women
from
the
pages of
the
Instituto
Andaluz de la
Mujer's
journal
Meridiana,
hat
it is
very difficult
for
women to
obtain a
real freedom
while
they
[women]
continue to
[make
up]
the
majority
of
those
who take
charge
of non
remunerated work
[in
the
home] that is
necessary
to
maintain
the
country
in
the
levels
of welfare and
comfort
that
are
in
place
at
present ...
[in
other
words] while
women
assume,
as
253
occurs
in
reality, 80 per cent [of
the
responsibility]
of non
remunerated work
and
only
30
per
cent of
remunerated
[work]
their access to liberty [will
be] very
reduced ... (Durdn1999, 9)
To attain freedom women
must be released from
the home
so that they can flood
out
and
become
visible
in
the public, masculine
arena
(Durdn
1987;
Vargas
1995). Thus the projectof
SSF
aims to
loosen
and break the chains
that
link
and bind
women to
the home,
at
both
the
legal
and
ideological level.
From the
'Other' to the
'Same'
While Friedan
(1963)
offers a framework
through
which to conceptualize
the 'problem' of gender
inequality, De Beauvoir provides
a clear direction
for its resolution. De Beauvoir confirms that the
meaning
of 'woman'
is
not innate,
in
that
it
does
not
have an inherent
nature. She insists that
womanhood is socially
constructed
in
relation
to
the
meaning of man. Woman
is that
which
is not
man.
If
man is the 'Same'
then she is
his
'Other'.
She
is
placed
in a violent
hierarchy
that
locates
her
as
the subordinate of
man. So
[wioman
... [must become] like man,
in
order
to escape
the debilitating
and
endlessly disempowering
impact of
femininity
as
the
condition
of otherness.
Refusing
this
condition becomes, for De Beauvoir, the definitive
feminist
project.(Evans 1997,
45)
A
refusal of
this condition
not
only depends
on
legislative changes
but
requires
a
transformation
of
women. The role
of
SSF, therefore,
is also one
of
'making up'
women
as citizens
capable
of
being
modern, equal, independent
and
liberated (Rose
and
Miller
1992).
Brooksbank
Jones
notes how 'no
study
of
Spanish
women
can avoid
...
[the]
binary
[of
tradition and
modernity]' (1997, vii).
Just as
the
issue of
women's
equality
vacillates
around
and between these two poles, so too does national
identity. Historians,
for
example,
have
identified
at
least two
Spains:
the
inward-looking Spain
of
traditionalist
Catholic values
...
[and a
liberal7]
Spain
of
progress
and
free
thought
which looked
to
Europe
...
(Carr1980, 12)
The
latter
viewed
'regeneracionismo'
or
national
regeneration
n
terms
of
development,
modernization
made
synonymous
with
Europeanization (Holman
1996).
In
1977,
with the end of
the
dictatorship,
the
desire
for liberal
regeneration
saw
the
disbanding
of the Secci6n
Femenina
(Loree
Enders
1999),
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254
and
supported the
institutionalization
of
equality
feminism. The
development of
democracy was
key
to
a liberal
regenerationof the
nation. Thus
equality
feminism
was able to
purchase
support for
its
institutionalization
(Escario et al.
1996) by linking
its project to democracy and national advancement.
Just as
Liberal Spain
seeks inclusion
amongst the
advanced
nations of
Europe, so SSF
seeks
the
inclusion of
women within
the arenas that
they
have
hitherto been
excluded from
(Instituto de la
Mujer
1997).
Collectively
this is
imagined
as
a
linear journey, a
transformation
from 'tradition'
to
'modernity'
(see, for
example, Borreguero
et
al.
1986),
from difference to
sameness.8
Transformations
Now
I
don't
have to be a woman
anymore.
I
need never
become
a
mother. Being a
woman
has
always been
humiliating, but I used
to
assume there was no
exit.
Now
the
very
idea 'woman' is up for
grabs. 'Woman'
is
my slave name;
feminism will
give me freedom to
seek
some other
identity altogether.
(Snitow 1990, 9)
Mujer,
liberate de la cocina
y unite.'
(Woman,
liberate
yourself from the
kitchen and
unite) (Escario
et al.
1996,
271)
Escario et
al's (1996)
study documents
the
history
of
the
women's
movement in Spain from
the late
1960s. I will draw on it to examine the initiatives of
equality
feminists, who with
a
zealous enthusiasm
(note
how De
Beauvoir's
The second sex was
termed the
'bible' of
feminism; Cafias
1999a, 32)
sought to reach
out to
women and
transform their
consciousness.
Having
identified
matrimony and
maternity as the
problems
to be
addressed,
consciousness-raising
initiatives by feminists
involved
cautioning women
that
marriage was a form
of dependence and
only
those who
engaged in paid
work were
able
to
become equals. They were advised that '[in some
way
[through marriage]
you have sold
yourself
to
the
person
who
[financially] supports
you' (Escario
et
al.
1996, 67).
Moreover,
women were called
on
to
reject
motherhood
because children
were seen
to
encourage
their
dependence on
men. As an
example
of
this,
in
recounting
her
experiences,
one feminist
noted how
she was
pregnant when
our
debate
on
the
rejection
of
maternity/motherhood
took
place: it was
[constructed
as]
the
fruit and the
origin
of all
our
problems
and
it
had
to
be
refused.
That
discussion
seemed brutal
to
me.
(Escario
et al.
1996,67-8)
Robina
Mohammad
These
ideas and
demands
led to a conflict
of
interests
with women
who had
male
partners
and
children,
so
that
There were
women
who came
and said
I can
not
continue listening to you because it is turning my
family
life up side
down. (Feminist,
quoted
in
Escario
et
al. 1996, 165)
L6pez-Accotto,
in her account
of
the
development
of feminism
during
the 1970s, registers
how
the
different
'histories, desires
and
needs
...
led to
not a few
misunderstandings'
(1999, 117),
but this
recognition
did little
to
challenge
the idea
of a
universal
sisterhood
in which
all women
share
a
common
experience
of
patriarchal
oppression
and
common goals
of modernity
and
equality (for
a
critique
of this in the context of Third World feminisms see
Spivak
1988;
Mohanty
1998).
For
equality
feminism,
the difficulties
in
appealing
to women across
differ-
ences becomes
merely
a
problem
of
communication
that
in
time
can be resolved
by
developing
the right
language
to represent
the reality
of women's
opp-
ressed
lives. By 'dressing
it
up'
as something
familiar,
equality
feminism
could
be
made
meaningful
for
women.
But
if 'traditional'
women
stubbornly resist
new
ideas,
change and
'progress',
then newer gen-
erations
will
be
more open
to
it
and have
a
greater
potential
to be 'modern'
and
equal.
Development
ndprogress
As
with
the
Spanish
liberal regenerationist
discourse
of the
nineteenth
and
early
twentieth
centuries,
SSF
associates
modernity
with the future,
with national
and
personal
'advancement'
(Romero
Perez
1999).
Progress
and
youth
are made
synonymous,
while
tradition
is
associated
with
the
past,
with backward-
ness, with
constraints
and
age.
As Carrasco10
t al.
note,
'egalitarian
attitudes',
regarded
as a
feature
of the
'modern',
'continue being
strongest
amongst
the youngest' (1997, 75). Borreguerroet al's (1986)
collection
of studies
mark and
celebrate women's
journey
to
the
'modern',
the
slow,
but
sure,
emerg-
ence of 'a
new
woman
who,
day by day,
is
gaining
ground'
(Capel
1986, 27).
In their study11 of
moth-
erhood and
women's participation
in
paid
work
(funded
and
published
by
the
Instituto de la
Mujer),
Violante
and
Quintana
argue
that these 'new'
women
'mark
..,
a
profound
change
in
mentality
which manifests itself
in
the
modernisation
and
progress
of
Spanish
society' (1992,
88).
As
a
flyer
(Plate
1)
for
the
Instituto
Andaluz de
la Mujer's
campaign
remarks of
these
women:
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The Cinderellacomplex
mas preparada
para
el
futuro
prepard
Ir the
future)
m
5
parti~ci
ativa
Om~s
moidrnma_
(moe
m
era
(mote em e)y
Plate 1
Source: Instituto Andaluz de la
Mujer
(translation
added)
[S~he
s a more
independent
woman with a
higher
level
of
education,
who not
only
searches
for,
but desires
remunerated
work,12
who is
sexually
more
free
[and]
less
likely
to abide
by
ancestral
concepts
and
the
Church.
(Capel
1986,
27)
Moreover,
it is the
desire to want to do remunerated work ...
[that
in
turn]
is
breaking
in a
dizzying
manner and without
any
order,
the feminine moulds of our civilisation.
This
fact is the result
of an
important change
of
mentality produced by
their
[women's]
conformation
to
industrialisation and modernisation of our
society
...
(Violante
and
Quintana
1992,
3)
Those women who have conformed are
responsible
for
the
high
increase
in rate of women's
[economic]
activity
[that]
...
constitutes a relevant indicator of the
process
of modernisation
in
the
Spanish society.
(Instituto
de la
Mujer
1993,
30)
Modern,
middle-class
women,
viewed as
key
to
national
progress
and therefore
an
important
national
asset,
are
targeted by equality programmes.
As
politi-
cian
and
scholar, Senator Victoria
Camp points
out:
When
we talk about
women's
liberation
we have in
mind
those women who can allow themselves to
choose between
working
and
not
working
-
middle
and
upper
class women. We have in mind literate
women who can be
interested in
jobs
other
than
cleaning
and
caring
for children.
(1994,
57)
255
. . .
.
. . . o . . . . . . . .
.W
~
j
Plate
2 The
same
opportunities,
equal
-
equal
They
are
visualized
by
the
Instituto
Andaluz
de
la
Mujer
flyer (Plate
2) promoting
equality
in
the
home
and
at
work.
Note
how those portrayed
are
all able
women
who
are either studying
or in
paid
work. They
seem
more European
than
Spanish
and
are likely
to be secular
rather
than
religious.
Yet
while
it is important
to celebrate
the
'very
important
rise
...
principally
[during
the 1970s
and 1980s],
in
the rate
of
non
single
women's
participation
in
labour
activity'
(Violante
and
Quintana
1992, 88),
the
home
continues
to wield
a
strong
grip
on
women.
This
is
particularly
so
for
those
with
the
responsibilities
of
motherhood
and/
or
caring
for the
sick,
elderly
or
disabled.
A
study
by
the
Cabinet
Office
Women's
and Equality
Unit
(2001)
in
Britain
shows
how
women's
association
with the home is difficult to break. The pay gap
between
men and
women
persists
(although
to a
lesser
degree)
even
for
those
who
are
more skilled
and
have elected
to remain
childless
(Cabinet
Office
Women's
and
Equality
Unit
2001).
Nevertheless,
part
of resisting
the hold
of the home
for
'modern'
women
translates
into
a
resistance
to
motherhood.
'Modern'
women
are
more likely
to be
single
and
if
married,
childless (for
a discussion
of
the rela-
tionship
between single
life,
modernization
and
national
advancement
see
Alborch 1999).
The
sharp
fall
in
Spain's
birth rate,
now
the lowest
in
Europe,
(Otamendi
1999;
Cafas
1999b
1999c
1999d)
is
not
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256
only an
indicator
of the
availability
of
contracep-
tion
and
information, and
economic
peaks
and
troughs
(Garrido
1993), but
also the
lower
social
value
placed
on
motherhood and
mothering. The
refusal or
deferral
of
motherhood
enables
women
in their quest for the colonization of masculine
spaces
(Violante
and Quintana
1992).
Disjuncture:
breaking he
chains
My
respondent
Cristina, aged
38,
is
married and in
part-time, paid
employment. She
is
classified, and
importantly
classifies
herself, as a
modern
woman.
Thus,
when
we
asked
Cristinahow
her life
compared
with
that
of her
mother's,
she
stressed
that 'my
life
is
much
better
than
that of
my
mother'.
Matilde'3
then
questions
her
about
why this
is so. Her
response is that her life is different:
firstly
in
the
objectives that
mark
you,
the
desire to
break
with
the
established.
I
am
concerned to
participate
in
breaking the
things I
see
that are
most
traditional.
It
is no
surprise,
therefore, that
when
she is asked
if
she
feels that
having
children is
important,
she
replies '. .
. yes.
For
those that
want
them'.
'Are
they
important
to you?', Matilde
persists.
No.
I
believe that
a woman
today
is
not fulfilled
by
motherhood
alone.
I
have been married
almost
13
years
and I am still fulfilling myself personally. I haven't
noticed
a
lack of
anything.
Her
refusal of
motherhood cannot
be
understood
as
separate
from
her
quest
to
break with
what
she
views
as the
most
traditional
elements of
society.
'Traditional'
women are
perceived
as
economically
dependent,
with
the
values
of
self
sacrifice,
passivity
and
obedience
cultivated
in
them
by
the 'hated
regime' (di
Febo
1979;
Scanlon
1986;
Morcillo
1988;
Loree
Enders
1999,
378; Morcillo
Gomez
1999;
Nash
2000).
If
these women
represent
femininity
then, young 'modern' women vehemently decline
any
association with it.
This is
evident
in
the
attitudes of
my
respondents towards
the
feminized
home and
'work'.
It
is
particularly
notable
amongst
those
aged
45 and
under,
including those
who have
had
closer
encounters with
the
Franquista
state and
/
or
whose
subjectivities
have
been
produced
to a
greater
degree
within SSF
discourse.
Boundaries,
bounded,
a bind
Young
generations
[of
women] who have
been
educated
within
models of
equality
[are]
better
prepared
(trained)
Robina Mohammad
and are [accustomed to]
an
environment
that is
more
competitive
in
every respect,
without
doubt, they have
a very different
attitude
from their
mothers
towards the
world of work. (Sarasia 1995, 6)
In this section I look at women's attitudes to the
home defined
with
respect
to forms of work.
I
note a high level of consensus particularly amongst
women aged 45 and under,
which
progressively
declines amongst older
women. With
respect
to
work
in
the home
and outside
of
it,
two
points
are raised constantly by
the
youngest respondents.
These are made here by Mata, aged 23, the
daughter of Benita (aged 55). Comparing forms of
work that are defined
geographically, she firstly
notes the nature and, by
implication, the status of
two types of work:
There are
differences
[in
the
two forms of
work]
in
the
first place
work
in
the house
does not
pay
and work
outside the home pays.
She is conscious
that
only
the
work
located outside
of the home is rewarded monetarily
but that
there
are
no
such
rewards for
domestic work.
This,
as
I will
discuss shortly, is
not
only significant
for
financial concerns,
but
also
has
implications
for
women's sense
of
self-worth.
Mata
continues
on
to
argue
that there are no
inherent benefits derived
from domestic work either.
You
...
don't
enjoy [the
work]
in
the house as much as
work
[outside
of
it. I
wouldn't
want
to be a
housewife]
because
it would bore me to
be
in
the house all
day
always doing
the same
thing.
At
[paid]
work
at
least
you
have more
activities
[to
do].
This is
a
common
view amongst the younger re-
spondents. Mona, aged 21,
for
example, argues
that
if I
have to do the cleaning every day,
it
would
weigh
[me]
down.
All
afternoon
in the house alone would
bore me.
Nena, aged 33, argues: 'the way
I
see
it
is that
it
[housework]
is
very
routine or
it
is the same old
drag'.
Of the
respondents
aged between
19 and
33, only Nena,
who
is
married,
undertakes
responsibility
for
housework,
while the
others,
who are all still
living
in
the
parental
home
(at
the
time of
interview),
depend
on their mothers.
Moreover, only
Mata and Nena have experience of
paid
work.
Cristina, aged 38,
referred to
earlier,
has
experi-
ence of both domestic and
paid
work.
She is the
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The
Cinderella
complex
only
postgraduate
amongst my
respondents
and
betrays a
greater
internalization of SSF
discourse.
While Mata,
Mona, Nena
and Yessica,
aged 25,
simply
point to the
routine
nature
and
dullness of
domestic work,
Cristina argues
that working
in
the
home is not only
always the
same [but] work in
the home is
[also]
mechanical.
Moreover work
in
the home
conditions
you.
How
can
I
explain? Work
in
the
house
conditions
your
psychic structure.
It
closes
your [mind].
Cristina's
views are
reiterated by
respondents
from
Violante and
Quintana's
(1992)
study. They
show how
the home is
experienced
by women as
a
container that hems them
in
within
its four
walls,
producing an
environment
that is
mentally stifling,
blocking personal
development.
Alongside the lack
of reward
promised by domestic
labour
undertaken in an
alienating
environment,
there is also a
third issue put
forward by
Violeta, a
feminist, working
within
the
municipal
state women's
office.
While she
acknowledges
that
today '[y]ou
can
opt to be a
housewife, you can
freely opt
to be
whatever you want',
she warns
that:
a
woman
who retains the
mentality, that
[even]
today
she can
remain within the
heart of the
home
dedicating
her self
only to
being
a
housewife, mother and
wife,
[she] perpetuates the situation
of
inequality
more and
more.
Why?
Because from
this perspective
you
are
not able
to demand the
sharing of tasks
within
the
house.
[So]
from this
perspective
she
[the
housewife]
is
limiting
[herself].
The woman
who limits
herself to the
house allows
herself to be
made a slave
to it. This
commonly
held view is
exemplified
by Yessica,
whose father
has
been
the breadwinner
while her
mother gave
up paid work to raise a
family of four sons
and a
daughter and
continues to
act as cook,
server
and
launderer to her
grown up
children,
including
married sons. Yessica declares:
I
am
clear
that
I
do not want
a life like my
mother
has
lived.
I
don't want to
be a slave of a
house.
In
the
end,
getting out of the house
serves
as an
escape
and
you
can
liberate
yourself
from
the problems that
you
have
in
the
house.
Thus,
a
release
from the
home enables women to
escape
an
alienating
environment and shed the
domestic
burden that
they have
hitherto undertaken
partly
because
it
was
their
given
role
in
society
and
partly
as a labour
of
love,
seduced
by
the
ideologies
of love and
romance.
257
Yet
in contrast
to young
women,
older
women,
particularly
those aged between
60
and
72,
who
as
wives
and mothers
have greater
experience
of
the
domestic
environment
as well as
paid work
in and
outside
of
the home,
rarely
speak about
the
home
as site of containment. Rather, they recall the
parental
and
marital home
as a
haven from poverty,
which articulated
with
state
repression
(Herr
1971;
Grugel
and Rees 1997)
during
the
early
post-Civil
War period
to generate
hardship
and
fear. Mdlaga
had been
resistant
to
the Nationalist
uprising
in
1936 and
remained
a republican
stronghold.
It
suffered
from
sustained
attack
by
the
Nationalists,
who
relied
on foreign
intervention
to
bring
it
down
(Barranquero
Texeira 1993).
Historian
Barranquero
Texeira points
out
how the
persecution
continued
after the Civil War when
groups
of
Falangistas
(fascist)
soldiers, [and]
the Civil
Guard
walked
the streets
and
it was not
difficult for
some
one to
shout 'he is
a red' so that they
would
be
immediately
detained. (1993,
217)
The
Civil Guard's
role
was to
weed out
any opp-
osition
to
General
Franco as
well
as other illegal
activity.
In these conditions
the home
provided
a
refuge.
Santana, aged
71,
recalls
for example
how:
My
father [was
involved
with]
the party,
the socialist
class that therewas, it again, seemed to me that he would
die,
because
he listened
to the
news
[on
the radio]
...
He
was
the first to have
a radio
and
the
people
of
Churriana [a
rural
locality
on the
outskirts
of
Malaga]
came
to
listen
to
it at
night
...
They
put
it in
a
small
room
that
we
had
at
the top,
because
the Civil Guard
[on
patrol]
used
to
come
at
night
and
any
one who had
a radio ...
would be
imprisoned.
My
father
and all the
other
men would
squeeze
into
this room
to
listen.
The
women
used
to
stay
below knitting
and whenever they
heard
beatings
or
noise, my
mother
would
say [to
us]
run
up.
Then the radio
would
be removed
and they
would
come
down and play
dominoes
and
had wine.
[In
this way]
we
lived
with
the
[danger
of] Civil Guard
'visiting' us,
many
times.
[But
the radio]
was
hidden
that is clear. [It
was
prohibited
because]
it
gave
information
of the war.
Nor
do these
women contrast
the
home
of
their
recollections
to the public
sphere,
as a site only
for
the production
of
use-value.
All but one of my
respondents
over
50 recounted
the
significance
of
the home
for
working-class
women as
a site
for
production
and
exchange,
in
the
struggle
for
survival
during
the
decade
that came
to be known
as
the
hungry
forties
(Cazorla
2000).
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258
A
discourse
that
almost
exclusively
addresses
women's
inequality
by
focusing on
their
exclusion
from
the
formal
labour
market
denies
their
struggles
to
contribute
economic
support
by
engaging
in
paid
work
on an
informal
basis.
Allen and
Wolkowitz
(1987) point out that while feminists have sought
to
distinguish
between
paid
and
unpaid
work in
order to
draw
attention
to unpaid
domestic
labour,
they
have often
retained the
spatialized
distinction
between
them.
Thus
paid
work
becomes
inter-
changeable
with
work
outside the
home or
'trabajo
de la
calle' as it
is
referred to
in
Spain,
which then
obscures
productive
activity
undertaken within
the
home. The
opposition of
public/private space
occludes
the
complex
construction
of
public and
private
space
(see
Staeheli
1996).
It
ignores the
effects of economic flexibalization and the reworked
temporalities and
spatialities of
production and
labour,
blurring the
distinction
between (Amin
1994)
formal and
informal
economies,
and
spaces
of
paid
and
domestic work. In
Spain
economic
flexibalization
has
promoted job
insecurity
for
women
(Camps
1994),
with
the rise in
flexibility
of
labour
contracts
since 1984.
Ninety
per cent of
new
contracts
in Spain
are
temporary,
fixed-
term
(Petrongolo and
Guell-Rotllan
1999). Ramirez
Alvarado
(again from
the
pages of
Meridiana)pro-
motes the
idea
that
'full-time
work is
the
only
route to a satisfactory life'
(1998, 25),
yet
women
comprise 75
per cent of
those
in
part-time
employ-
ment.
Women's
marginality
in
the
labour
market
weakens
their
position in
bargaining
for better
pay
and
conditions.
Thus,
while
equality
feminism
promotes the
labour
market as
a
panacea for
women's
disempowerment,
the
capitalist labour
market
has
failed to
deliver.
Conclusion
The Spanish women's movement, one of a number
of
oppositional
movements that
emerged
against
the
dictatorship
in
the
late
1960s, nurtured the
development
of
equality
feminism.
Equality
eminism
drew
on
the
optic of
Anglo-American liberal
feminism,
specifically Friedan and De
Beauvoir,
to
(re)narrate
the
dictatorship and
through
this,
the
history of
Spanish
women.
It is
against
this
narrative
that
equality
feminism
developed the
meaning
of
equality for
women.
Posited
in
oppositional
terms,
the
pivot of
women's
equality remained
the home.
From
this
perspective, the marital
home not
only
determines
women's
opportunities
for
financial
Robina Mohammad
independence
but confinement within
its four walls
blocks the
very life force to those
held captive by
it.
Thus colonization of the
'masculine' public sphere
beyond the home is posited
as the goal
that delivers
liberationand equality.
Those women associated most
closely with the home are classified as 'traditional'.
Franquismo sought to
direct women towards the
home, cultivating
in
them
Catholic values of self-
sacrifice, subservience
and
passivity.
Yet as this
study suggests,
even
women who 'reduced'
(Pardo
2000) themselves
to the home were
far from passive
or subservient,
but
actively fought poverty,
struggled
against state repression
and sought control
over
their fertility.
In
contrast
with 'traditional' women,
those who
have been
able to establish
their distance from the
home are deemed to be 'modern', associated with a
very different set of characteristics,
such as inde-
pendence,
assertiveness
and secularism as
well
as
sexual liberation.
Thus 'traditional' and 'modern'
provide
the organizing
frame of this narrative of
women's
oppression whose stage is
the
home. It
reads like Cinderella,
a
caricature,
which
in turn
becomes
an
oppressive
fiction
making
invisible
very significant
differences
between women"4 of
class, geography
as well
as
political position
(it
is
important to remember
that
the women of the
Secci6n Femenina
were
on the
right
in
political
terms
and supported Franquismo).
Just as the
capitalist
class
in
Marxist
terms is
not
a
singular,
unified entity
with the same interests nor are
women
(Gibson-Graham
1996).
As
Molyneux (2001)
argues,
the plurality of
women
means that
solidarity
between
them is not
a
given
but
must be
con-
structed
through
discourse
and communication.
So women's
movements
and
organizations
must
seek
to build a multi-voiced
coalition
(Adams
1994).
These are dilemmas
which
equality
feminism has
successfully side-stepped
as
it
has
questioned
the
broader structuresof inequalitywithin which gender
operates.
The world
of SSF is
one
in
which
equality
is
translated as the
production
of
labour
markets
where women are
equally
'free' to
sell their
labour.
Spanish
State Feminism
has tended
to
adopt
what
Phizacklea
and Wolkowitz
call
a
model of employment that
assumes the separation
of
home and work.
It
is a model
of
work that adopts
the
able-bodied
adult male
working pattern
as the norm
and which therefore
produces
a
distorted
picture
of
who 'workers'
are,
where
they
work and what are
typical working
hours and
routines.
(1995,28)
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The Cinderellacomplex
259
Indeed, if one
goes by its
iconography,
this world
is
peopled
only by
young,
highly
attractive,
able-
bodied
women
who can
get
outside the
home and
do paid
work.
There is no
place for
the
old,
infirm
or
disabled.
There
is no
place for
the
elderly
woman I encountered in the centre of Madrid,
after
having
spent
the day at
the
Instituto de la
Mujer
headquarters
reading about
all
its work
for
women's
equality.
As she
sits
there bent
double,
her
spine
crooked
with
age,
begging for
a few
coins,
I
wonder what
meaning this
circumscribed
'official'
equality
can hold
for
her.
Spending her
days
on the
footpath,
she
seems to
be
effectively
colonizing the
public
sphere but
perhaps not
quite
in
the
ways
intended by
equality
feminism. It
is
clear
that she
is not a
slave
to the
home,
but
simply
homeless.
Acknowledgements
This
research was
funded
by
Leverhulme
Study
Abroad
Fellowship and
King's
College
London
Association
Fellowship. I
would
also like to thank
Maria
Dolors
Ramos
Palomo
(University of
Mdlaga)
for
her
support, Keith
Hoggart, James
Sidaway,
Adam
Tickell
and
three
anonymous
referees for
their
comments and
encouragement.
Notes
1
Liberal
forms
of
governance
contrast
themselves
with
authoritarian
forms,
by
seeking
to
identify 'a
domain
outside
"politics"and
... to
manage it
without
destroying
its
existence and
its
autonomy'
(Rose and
Miller 1992,
180). The
focus for
liberals,
then, is on
the
creation of
conditions
whereby the
contractual
rela-
tions between
citizen and
society can
function,
where
the
sense of
rights is as
strong as
that of
obligations.
2
The
age
distribution of
the
respondents
was
as follows:
nine
respondents
were aged
between 60
and 72;
seven
aged between 52 and 57; ten aged between 39 and 46;
seven
aged between 29
and
33; eleven
aged
between
21
and
25.
3
The
research
was
conducted
in
Mdlaga
(Andalucia)
between 1998 and
2000.
Initial
respondents
were recruited
through local
women's
associations
supported
by the
Delegacion
Municipal
de la
Mujer
and
Instituto Anda-
luz
de la
Mujer.
4
Taken
from the
title of book
by
Durdn De puertas dentro
(1987).
5
Graham
(1995) argues
that
Republicans saw the
education of
middle-class
women as a means of
pro-
ducing
the nation in
its
own
image
and national
regeneration.
6
National
Catholicism
emphasized
a
notion of
Christian
morality that
shares much with Islamic
societies and
relates
to the maintenance
of family honour
(Mernissi
1975;
Afshar 1989; Mohammad
1999). This honour
resides
not
in
the
man,
the
head
of
the
family, but
in
the chastity of his daughters. Through the notion of
honour,
the
Franquista
state could
reinforce men's
position as guardians
of women's morality (Telo
1986;
Mernissi 1975; Afshar
1989).
7 The doctrine of liberalism
characterizedby a
concern
to limit
the exercise of
power appealed
in
a
Spain
where
liberalism
s defined by
its battle against
absolutism since
the first
liberal Constitution
was established
in
1812, by
the
Cortes
of
Cadiz,
a
special parliament
meeting
in
Cadiz
during
the
Napoleonic
Wars (Brenan1960;
Carr
1980).
8
This achievement
is celebrated
by
Senator
Victoria
Camps:
'we can
say
now that there
is no
difference
between
Spanish
women
and
European
women who
come from countries with a long tradition of democ-
racy and
emancipation' (1994, 56).
9
Feminists'
slogans calling
attention
to their cause
between
1978 and 1983.
10 Published by
the Instituto de la
Mujer.
11 Based on in-depth
interviews
with
23
mothers aged
32,
who
had
engaged
in
paid
work.
12 Victoria
Camps reinforces
the
point
when she argues
'84
per
cent of women
with
higher
education are
active
whereas
only
13
per
cent of
illiterate
women
are interested
in
working' (1994,
56).
13 My research
assistant involved
in the
process
of
recruitment
and interviews.
14 Anglo-American
black and postcolonial
feminists have
put
forward cogent
critiques
of the binary
of
man and
women
(Carby
1982;
Amos and Parmar
1984;Mohanty
1998;
Ramusack
and Sievers
1999;
Rai
2002, 39).
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