During the 1940s, women faced many obstacles to entering the workforce, including financial penalties for working outside the home, job loss upon marriage and few legally available occupations.
Some groups like Sección Feminina and Falange responded to this by offering women childcare services in a limited context.
The policy of the Franco regime with regard to women was a huge setback for the Republic as it set out to impose the traditional Catholic family model based on the total subordination of the wife to her husband.
It reduced women to their place in the home as the Labor Charter of 1938 proclaimed changes in order "to free the married woman from the workshop and from the factory."
This hindered women's access to education and vocational and professional life and abolished or restricted their rights both in the public and private domains.
One example involved Franco returning to the Civil Code of 1889 and the former Law Procedure Criminal, which sanctioned the legal inferiority of women.
[3] By the end of 1939, women could not register as workers at employment offices unless, as heads of family, their economic situation forced them to work.
[4] However, these measures could not prevent women from working, for "obvious reasons of family subsistence", but always with lower salaries than men, between 30 and 50% less.
[3] The Labor Regulation Act of 1942 stated that women had to sign a voluntary dismissal form within a month of being married that resulted in them losing their job.
This act also had a clause that said to work in the industrial or commercial sector, women needed to have proof they had been vaccinated and a doctor's note saying they did not have a contagious disease; no similar requirement existed for men.
Married women with young children often had high results of absenteeism on full-time jobs where they were expected to work 40 to 48 hours a week.
Even in the face of international programs like the Red Cross and visiting medical professionals from abroad, Spanish medicine resisted making its hierarchy and teaching practices less sexist.
Further attempts to dislodge midwives from the birthing process included accusing them of witchcraft and quackery, trying to make them appear unscientific.
It led to a progressive increase in women's legal salaried work, as well as greater access to the middle and upper levels of education.
All of this involved changes in the family structures themselves, the increase in the presence of women in public spheres and a greater diffusion of alternative models on the female condition, which contrasted clearly with the values fostered by the official Francoist approach.
[11] Adelia Díaz commented on women's issues in the 1950s: "The woman depended on everything from a man, she did not have a bank account in her own name, it had to be either with the father's name or, once married, with the husband's name."
[13] Technological innovations of the 1950s and 1960s pushed a lot of women into the workforce at a time when Spain's economy was undergoing a radical transformation.
Despite less stringent laws, they still faced many restrictions, including the need for their husband to approve their job before allowing them to sign an employment contract.
Pilar Primo de Rivera commented, "The law rather than being feminist is, on the contrary, supportive of what men can give to women as the emptier glass.
But there are many families not just in Spain but around the world that cannot dispense with working women, precisely because it ensures there is enough for their children's care and education, the primary goal of marriage.
"[6] Discrimination in employment based on gender was banned in 1961, with exceptions for the judiciary, armed forces and merchant navy.
Comisiones Obreras served a pivotal role in positioning the PCE as a leading union organizer and key opposition player during the Franco period.
Another change was that working women could continue their jobs after they married or could terminate their contract early by paying a compensatory dowry.