Women in modern pre-Second Republic Spain

Some of the most important feminists of this period included Clara Campoamor, Virginia González and Carmen de Burgos.

Single Spanish women enjoyed a few more legal rights than their married peers once they reached the age of 23.

Married women needed the approval of or involvement of their husbands to do things like change their address, accept an inheritance, and own property or a business.

[1][2] Catholicism played a huge role in Spanish political thinking in nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain.

They built on ideas that were being developed by the North American feminists, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman.

The cultural situation in Spain resulted in a largely uneducated female population, with the literary rate for women only at 10% in 1900.

[1]  The Institución Libre de Enseñza (ILE) was founded by persecuted Spanish intellectuals, and catered to freethinkers in educational facilities removed from government control.

[1] Prostitution was legal in pre-Second Republic Spain, and poor, white women had to fear being trafficked as slaves.

[7] Despite the lack of presence in the workforce, women did engage in labor protests in specific industries where they were over represented.

This included labor action in Madrid in 1830, where there was five days of rioting over wage reductions and unsafe working conditions by 3,000 female tobacco workers.

[7] The year 1919 marked the first time that attempts were made to mobilize conservative women in Spain, with the Acción Católica de la Mujer (ACM).

[9] Following its creation, women were involved in efforts to defy the government when it came to laws that challenged the supremacy of Catholicism in Spain.

Spanish feminist intellectuals in this period included the militant socialist María Cambrils, who published Feminismo socialista.

[7] When women were involved in factory work in this period, they were often paid half the wage of their male counterparts.

[1][7] Despite the limited opportunities for women, some did manage to get highly ranked government positions through political connections, though these were few and far between.

[9] During this period, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español did not overall want to address women's rights as they saw the movement as bourgeois.

The International Socialist Congress, Stuttgart 1907 issued a statement in favor of women's suffrage, but said the movement needed to come from the proletariat.

The conditional support was because men believed that women's rights should only come after universal male suffrage.

[12][13] The limited inclusion came about as a result First International Conference of Socialist Women which was being held concurrently in the same building.

Falcón further argued this position would make feminists into enemies of the party, a truth that would be born out by 1921, which Socialist men decided that to stop their small efforts to promote rights of women as they did not believe it was the time to push for electoral reforms.

ANME's early feminism was characterized by its right wing leanings, as a result of it being associated with Spain's upper classes.

[8] The 1918 Congress of Confederación Nacional del Trabajo demonstrated the gender based tensions among anarchists in Spain.

This was in large part because male anarchists did not want to see a power dynamic change which would result in a diminishment of their own status.

[1] Margarita Nelken, María Martínez Sierra and Carmen de Burgos were all important pre-Republic writers who influenced feminist thinking inside Spain.

Not until the death of her husband in 1947 did María de la O Lejárraga claim authorship of these writings and admit to intentionally trying to use a masculine voice to try add credibility to them.

Her wider body of feminist work also sat outside the feminism being developed by Anglo women in North America and Great Britain, but was well received inside Spain where her plays were performed in Madrileño theaters.

Yet, despite this, they failed to offer any sort of comprehensive policy solution to this problem and were not willing to advocate strongly on the need to address women's education.

Falcón further argued this position would make feminists into enemies of the party, a truth that would be born out by 1921, which Socialist men decided that to stop their small efforts to promote rights of women as they did not believe it was the time to push for electoral reforms.

Writing from a socialist perspective, her feminist works sought to address the conflict between the roles women were expected to maintain in a patriarchal society.

She helped co-found the International Institute for Young Ladies in Spain in 1913 as part of larger collaborative efforts.