They were influenced by feminists texts like Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which had begun to be circulated more underground.
It took on several broad forms including "feminismo reformista", which advocated for legal and social changes for women without challenging Spain's traditional gender roles.
Feminism as a global movement begins in France following the end of the French Revolution, when in 1791 Olimpia de Gouges wrote a declaration of the rights of women and the citizen.
[2] French, Italian, Germany and American feminism all developed differently from Spain because those countries existed under more democratically ideal governments, both during the Second Republic and during the Francoist period.
According to Italian academics like Rosi Braidotti, Gianna Pomata and Paola di Cor, this model can be problematic in the context of Mediterranean feminism as it ignores specific cultural baggage for women from the region.
[5][6] These models are also particularly problematic in a Spanish context as they fail to address the very nature of Francoism that sought to purge all female identity from society through forced assimilation legitimized by fear and violence.
Second-wave feminism was in response to women entering the labor market and higher education in large numbers, and having the ability to decide their own trajectory within these domains.
Named after an Italian car, women in this movement wore wedge shoes with cork soles, skirts worn a little longer than the knee, nylon stockings and tight dresses.
Voluntary dependency, the offering of every minute, every desire and illusion is the most beautiful thing, because it implies the cleaning away of all the bad germs -- vanity, selfishness, frivolity -- by love.
[28] The pride that women got in completing these domestic tasks associated with Sección Femenina's teachings has been described by Guiliana Di Febo as Christian feminism.
This included greater contact with foreign ideas as a result of emigration and tourism, increased educational and employment opportunities for women and major economic reforms.
At the same time, feminists texts like Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique began to be circulated more underground, helping to shape the emerging Women's Movement.
Its members included Isabel Grau, Inés Fuentes Fernández, Marta Aguilar Gallego, Pilar Ortega García and Maite Caballero Hidalgo.
The Valencia-based group had plans to attack an annex at the Trinitat Vella women's prison in Barcelona run by the nun of the Crusades of Christ the King.
Despite many attendees thinking abortion, divorce and contraceptive were important to understanding the situation of Spanish women, these topics were largely out of bounds because of Sección Femenina's positions on them.
It was part of a reality that Sección Feminina could no longer ignore these groups as Spain started to undergo social upheaval because of contradictory demands by the regime placed upon women.
[22] MDM's main issues reflected those of PCE, including lowering food prices, improved pedestrian safety by creating more crosswalks, and showing solidarity with political prisoners.
Because of their overt feminist ideologies, some supporters worried MDM's "doble militancia" would diminish their effectiveness as they sought to work towards concrete political goals.
In this new period of activity, they were attacked by many leftist organizations who believed they were too bourgeois and that a focus on feminist goals was a distraction from the broader class based struggle in Spain.
The group faced internal divisions on whether they needed male activists to achieve women's political goals, or whether they should remain sex segregated so as to challenge patriarchal beliefs.
[22] Starting in 1974 in Barcelona, contacts were made among various feminist groups such as Asociación Española de Mujeres Universitarias (AEMU), Asociación Española de Mujeres Separadas (AEMS), and housewife and Catholic women's associations (HOAC, JOC, MAS) to begin to develop a unified and democratic feminist definition and list of goals.
[11][42][4] The 1975 document of the Primeras Jornadas por la Liberación de la Mujer asked for:[1][45] -Remove all discrimination against women that persisted in the legislation.- Make using contraception and committing adultery disappear as crimes.- Promulgation of a law regulating divorce.- Right to salaried work without discrimination (to equal work equal salary and equal promotion).- Training and promotion of women in order to ensure economic independence.- Creation of nurseries in neighborhoods or in jobs to help working women.- Sex education campaigns in schools and the creation of family planning centers.-Distribution of family responsibilities.-Change the traditional mentality and education.
This new wave of feminism was both similar and notably dissimilar to their American counterparts of the same name by being more explicitly socialist and politically focused on class in their orientation.
They made gender identity based around shared female experiences, the ability to make choices, a social itinerary and constructing their own history separate from motherhood.
Feminists also held protests in support of the decriminalization of adultery, equality in the workforce, the right to assembly, the ability to strike, and the suppression of images the movement felt were degrading to women.
The nuns of the order Evangelical Crusades of Christ the King continued their work during the Franco regime by running the Trinitat Vella women's prison in Catalonia.
Being a feminist in our country means fighting against unjust structures that are the that make possible the special oppression suffered by women, and against an entire ideological superstructure that has impregnated machismo and phallocratic schemes to the most recondite places of our society.
[1] The transition period saw Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) come into power led in 1977 by Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez on a liberal platform espousing women's rights.
These women were opposed to Article 15, which said that "everyone has the right to life" (Spanish: todos tienen derecho a la vida) as they felt it could be interpreted as offering protection to fetuses.
Despite this, women affiliated with PSOE continued to deal with issues of dual militancy, where they battled both for their political goals and feminist ideology that sometimes could be at odds with each other.