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…
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