(FUVEST - 2002 - 1a fase)The role of women in Span

(FUVEST - 2002 - 1a fase)

The role of women in Spanish society has changed fast since the country became a democracy after General Franco died in 1975. He had swept away liberal reforms introduced in the 1930s, when Spain was a republic. For women specifically, these included a benevolent divorce law and certain property rights. In the 1930s many women played a big part on the left, often fighting side by side with men in the pro-Republic militias during the 1936-39 civil war. But after it the new regime, for the most part applauded by the church, put them back in the home as wives and mothers, with divorce forbidden and working outside frowned on.

Change began in the 1960s when Spain opened  up to tourists. Faced with competition from sexually liberated north Europeans, Spanish women “declared war on them, on men and on their elders”, in the words of Lucia Graves, author of “A Woman Unknown”, which recounts her life as an Englishwoman married to a Spaniard at the time. That aggressive self-assertion continues.

Not wholly successfully. At universities, women students now outnumber men. A typical couple has one or two children these days, a far cry from the days when families of eight or ten were common. But Spanish women still face the problems of their sisters in northern Europe. Their progress at work is often blocked, their pay often lower than men’s.

The Economist August 11th 2001

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