Women in Spanish revolution by Liz Willis
Women in the Spanish revolution
by Liz Willis
Introduction
In a way, it is clearly artificial to try to isolate the role of
women in any series of historical events. There are reasons, however,
- why the attempt should still be made from time to time; for one
thing it can be assumed that when historians write about "people" or
"workers" they mean women to anything like the same extent as men. It
is only recently that the history of women has begun to be studied
with the attention appropriate to women's significance - constituting
as we do approximately half of society at all levels. (1)
In their magnum opus The Revolution and the Civil War in
Spain (Faber & Faber, 1972), Pierre Brow and Emile
Témime state that the participation of women in the Spanish
Revolution of 1936 was massive and general, and take this as an index
of how deep the revolution went. Unfortunately, details of this
aspect are scarce in their book elsewhere, but the sources do allow
some kind of picture to be pieced together. In the process of
examining how women struggled, what they achieved, and how their
consciousness developed in a period of intensified social change, we
can expect to touch on most facets of what was going on. Any
conclusions that emerge should have relevance for libertarians in
general as well as for the present-day women's movement.
Background
Conditions of life for Spanish women prior to 1936 were oppressive
and repressive in the extreme. Work was hard, long and poorly paid
(2), and when improvements did occur they were not always entirely
beneficial to women. Figures from the Instituto de Reformas Sociales
(quoted in S.G.Payne, The Spanish Revolution, Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1970), show that in the decade 1913-22, men's wages
increased by 107.1% and women's by only 67.9%, while prices rose by
93%. When the 1931 Republic established the eight-hour day for
agricultural labourers, this meant, according to a peasant in Seville
Prison who talked to Arthur Koestler, that the men could go to
meetings and gossip, while their wives could return home at 5 p.m.,
prepare the meal, and see to the children's clothes.
Minimal reforms including maternity compensation had, however,
been introduced, and featured in the aims of most progressive groups.
Politically, the Republican Constitution of 1931 brought-votes for
both sexes at 23, a radical departure for the time and place. At
first, it has been said (by Alvarez del Vayo in Freedom's Battle), a
woman's vote merely doubled the power of her husband or confessor,
But the situation was being modified. The Republic brought measures
of education and secularisation, including provision for divorce if
"just cause" were shown. Despite the weight of internalised
inferiority under which they must have laboured, many women were
starting to involve themselves actively in politics. (3)
On the libertarian side, the strong anarchist movement
incorporated a certain awareness of the necessity to envisage changed
relationships between people. For its adherents, the abolition of
legal marriage at least was-on the agenda. It is more difficult to
assess to what extent their personal lives embodied a transformation
in attitudes, but it seems that the particular problems of women were
not a priority concern.(4)
In fact they were not much of a priority with anyone. Margarita
Nelkin, a Socialist who was to become a deputy in the Cortes, wrote
about The Social Condition of Women in Spain (Barcelona, 1922)
and Women in the Cortes (Madrid, 1931); there was a movement
for women's rights in the early twenties, but it had a reformist and
careerist orientation, based on women in the professions. For
anarchists, reformist, minimal or transitional programme was more or
less out. The focus was on thoroughgoing social revolution.
Unfortunately, any theoretical discussion of what such a revolution
might involve was often out too, in favour of an assumption that
things would work out spontaneously in the best possible way.
Revolution
In the response to the military insurrection of July 18, 1936
against the Republic there was indeed a powerful element of
spontaneity. Events overtook the parties and leaders, including the
"leading militants" of the CNT-FAI (syndicalist National
Confederation of Labour, and the Spanish Anarchist Federation). One
of the latter, Federica Montseny alluded later to "the revolution
we all desired but did not expect so soon". Women played a full
part. In the view of Alvarez del Vayo, they were dominant in the
response to the uprising and formed the backbone of resistance.
Broué and Témime tell us they were present everywhere -
on committees, in the militias, in the front line. In the early
battles of the civil war, women fought alongside men as a matter of
course. (5)
Women were necessarily and naturally involved in the developing
socia1 revolution, in the collectives which established themselves in
town and countryside, after the flight of many bosses and landlords.
This fact implies certain changes, in their way of living, their
degree of alienation in work and leisure (if they had any leisure),
their state of mind, the attitudes of others to them. But the
transformation in social relations, particularly in the status of
women in the community, was a long way from being total, even in
areas where libertarians had the greatest control over their own
situation.
A simple index of the continued inferiority of a woman's position
is provided by statistics on wages in the collectives. Women were
often paid at a lower rate than men. (6) To give some examples:
a) In the retail trade in Puigcerda, men earned 50
pesetas a week, and women 35;
b) In the Segorbe agricultural collective, men earned 5 pesetas a
day compared with 4 for a single woman and 2 for a wife;
c) In Muniesa, men received 1 peseta a day, women and girls 75
centimos and those under 10 years got 50 centimos. (7)
Many of the agricultural collectives agreed a "family wage",
varying with the numbers involved on the principle "To each
according to his needs". A household where man and wife both
worked because they had no children might receive 5 pesetas per day,
while one where only the man was seen as working for the collective,
as his wife had to care for 2, 3 or 4 children, might receive 6, 7 or
8 pesetas. (8) According to Hugh Thomas (9) there was almost
everywhere a separate scale of pay for working husbands and wives,
with different bonuses for working sons, minors, and invalids, and
separate rates for bachelors, widows and retired couples. Rates might
vary from 4 to 12 pesetas a day. Sometimes certain categories of
women did comparatively well. in Villaverde, widows were accorded the
same as bachelors, plus child allowances - on the other hand,
bachelors generally had free access to the communal restaurant, while
others had to pay one peseta.
The idea of a scale of wages directly discriminating against women
is not, then, accurate in every case. But there is clear evidence of
a widespread assumption, based on the concept of the patriarchal
family, that women did not require equal pay. Opinions of libertarian
observers differed on the matter. Jose Peirats considered that the
family wage was a way of meeting the desire for privacy and a more
intimate way of life. H. E. Kaminski took a harder line, asserting
that the family card put the most oppressed human beings in Spain -
women - under the control of men. (10) He took this as proof that the
anarchist communism of the village of Alcora had "taken its nature
from the actual state of things".
As a measure of reform, the new wages system had its positive
aspect. At least the right of women to the means of subsistence,
whatever their role in society, was generally recognised; so was that
of children. Peirats tells us that on the land, housewives were not
obliged to work outside the home except when absolutely necessary
(extras could be "called up" by the town crier to work in the fields
in case of need), and pregnant women were treated with special
consideration. Daughters of peasant families were no longer forced to
go into service in the cities or abroad. Covered by the family wage,
young women sometimes donated their labour to make uniforms - a
reminder that the size of the wage packet was not now of such vital
concern to workers. The situation had a degree of flexibility
allowing for more choices than before, despite the continued division
of labour which assigned all household tasks to women.
Perhaps the principal factor lessening the alienation of
wage-labour (for the anarchist ideal of a wageless, indeed money-free
society was not found practical given the limited and fragmented
nature of the revolution) was the chance to participate in collective
decision-making. The policy and practice of each collective would be
decided by its General Assembly, which usually elected a Committee of
Administration. The extent to which women were involved directly in
determining their own status is uncertain. Hugh Thomas reckoned:
"It is not clear if every member of the collective was sometimes
included, evern women (sic) and at any rate working children, or
whether; as is more likely, only workers were expected to
attend." This would be a serious indictment of the collectives if
taken literally, but Thomas groping toward an inkling of what makes
libertarians tick is not the most reliable interpreter.
Gaston Leval in Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (translated
by Vernon Richards, Freedom Press, 1975; pp. 207-213), reports the
meeting of a village assembly attended by "about 600 people
including some 100 women, girls and a few children". Business
included a proposal to "organise a workshop where the women could
go and work instead of wasting their time gossiping in the street.
The women laugh but the proposal is accepted." There also arises
"the nomination of a new hospital director (and we learn that the
director is a woman, which is fairly unusual)". He records the
obvious interest and involvement in the discussions, to the extent
that "no one left before the end... No women or child had gone to
sleep". Women might generally be present, then but not
necessarily on an exactly equal footing with men.
Even so, Thomas has noted the "absence of the whole complicated
apparatus of traditional Catholic living and of all the things that
went with it (such as the subordination of women)" as a factor
that sustained persistent exhilaration for the vast majority of
workers. Assumptions about female functions and femininity were not,
of course rejected overnight. Leval has written about women shopping
for provisions, dress shops making fashionable clothes for women and
girls, young girls being taught how to sew clothes for their future
children, among other unquestioning reflections of "the actual
state of things". But the impression of significant changes in
attitudes and in the general social atmosphere is conveyed by many
first-hand observers.
As early as August 1936, Franz Borkenau (11) noted the self-
assurance of women in Barcelona, hitherto unusual for Spanish women
in public. Militia girls invariably wore trousers, which had been
unthinkable before; but even when armed, Spanish women were still
chaperoned, unlike the female volunteers of other nationalities. In
Madrid, too, he found the changed position of women conspicuous;
young working-class girls were to be seen in hundreds, perhaps
thousands, collecting for International Red Help. He describes their
obvious enjoyment of what was for many a first appearance in public -
collecting in couples, going up and down streets and into elegant
cafes, talking uninhibitedly to foreigners and militia-men.
All the same, and in spite of other commentators' occasional
mutterings about "promiscuity", he considered there was a general
absence of any deep upheaval in sex life, less than in the Great War.
But there was at least a tendency to dispense with or simplify the
legal formalities. In place of marriage, anarchists favoured a Free
Union based on mutual trust and shared responsibility; the bond
between lovers was in many situations regarded as equivalent to the
marriage tie. In collectives, according to Leval, the legal marriage
ceremony persisted because people enjoyed it as a festive occasion -
comrades would go through the procedures, then destroy the
documentary proof.
The collectives embodied their own pressures to conformity, not
only in the matter of work, which was expected to be taken seriously,
but also in sexual matters. People who got married were often awarded
gifts, extras and help with housing; on the other hand, the
collective had the power to withhold privileges, such as the means to
travel to town, if the purpose was considered unsuitable. Kamenski
saw the village committee of Alcora in the role of pater families; he
quotes a member of the collective as saying, "There is no money
for vice". Survivals of traditional attitudes included the
curious assumption in some collectives that separate dining rooms
were necessary for men and women, as required by human dignity.
Segregation was also practiced in the home for destitute children in
Madrid, where boys were lodged, fed and taught, by a staff of women
teachers, in the Palace Hotel, and girls in another building.
With all its limitations, the Spanish Revolution in its first
phase brought new possibilities for women, in the zones not taken
over by the Nationalists, and an element of personal liberation for
some. One group which attempted to get a libertarian perspective on
the situation was Mujeres Libres (Free Women). By the end of
September I936 it had seven Labour Sections - Transport, Public
Services, Nursing, Clothing, Mobile Brigades for non-specialists, and
brigades able to substitute for men needed in the war.(12) The
federation grew, organising for women to make the maximum
contribution to whatever practical work had to be done. Its members
saw themselves as having an important educational function, working
to emancipate women from the traditional passivity, ignorance and
exploitation that enslaved them, and towards a teal understanding
between men and women, who would work together without excluding each
other. They saw a need to awaken women to vital consciousness of
their movement, and convince them that isolated and purely feminine
activity was now impossible. They saw themselves as based on
comprehensive human aspirations for emancipation, realisable only in
social revolution, which would liberate women from the stagnation of
mediocrity.
Politically, the slogans of Mujeres Libres described the situation
simply as a struggle between two classes and two ideologies: labour
against privilege; liberty against dictatorship. It was to prove
rather more complicated. The characteristic anarchist mixture of
high-flown rhetoric, sketchy theory and intensive practical activity
did not match up to the exigencies of grim political reality, despite
the real achievements of the group under difficult conditions.
Defence of Madrid
Of course, the Nationalist threat was forcibly present, providing
at first a stimulus as well as menace to revolutionary action, as
people took the fight against it in their own hands. The stand made
for Madrid against the Nationalist army in early November 1936
renewed the spirit of the immediate response to the military rising,
and again women played as great a part as in the first days of the
war. A women's battalion fought before Segovia Bridge. At Gestafe, in
the centre of the northern front, women were under fire all morning
and were among the last to leave. In the retreat to Madrid,
occasional militia women were to be seen - some more soldierly in
appearance than the men, others neat, groomed and made-up, a male
observer noted. (13) With the Italians of the International Column in
Madrid was a sixteen-year-old girl from Ciudad Real, who had joined
up after her father and brother were killed. She had the same duties
as men, shared their way of life, and was said to be a crack shot,
Inside the city, women organised mass demonstrations, devised
propaganda and slogans including the famous "No Paseran"
("They Shall Not Pass", accredited to La Pasionara), and built
barricades, often with 'the help of children and sometimes under
fire. Committees were set up based on districts, houses and blocks,
for the provision of food, ammunition and communications. Women
contributed actively to the defence, including anti-aircraft
observation, and surveillance of fifth- column suspects. Their
committees organised collective meals and laundry; the creches and
maternity homes set up between July and October carried on as best
they could. Broué and Témime have described the spread
of House and Neighbourhood Committees as amounting to a second Madrid
Revolution, the basis of a genuine Commune.
Simultaneously, women often had to bear the brunt of hardship,
risking violation of the curfew regulations which barred them from
the streets before 6 a.m., in order to get a good place in queues for
food (the first place the next day went to those not served). Wives
were told that they must be ready to take the men's lunches not to
the factories but to the trenches. (14) Working-class women carried
hot meals to the barricades. More middle-class women ran soup
kitchens for refugees and first-aid stations for victims of
fifth-column sniping.
Not everything done by women, however, can be seen in the same
positive light. Accounts of recruiting processions of women, marching
through the streets and calling idlers out of cafes, can be
unpleasantly reminiscent of the erstwhile Suffragettes' white-feather
chauvinism during the First World War. This impression is enhanced by
a consideration of the attitudes evinced by Dolores Ibarruri, who
became prominent as La Pasionaria about this time, her voice
incessantly on loudspeakers in the streets and on Radio Madrid,
urging women to fight with knives and boiling oil against the
invader. The struggle against the Nationalists began to be posed in
neo-nationalist terms, as the true patriotism - a recurring
historical motif - instead of in class terms against reaction By now
the pressure to unite and fight against the fascists was beginning to
threaten the gains of the revolution itself.
Retrenching, Legalisation, Thermidor
As the initial revolutionary impetus slowed, and the forces on the
Republican side geared themselves to the task of winning the war, the
contribution made by women did not diminish, but became more
supportive in character. By November, according to Gilbert Cox, there
were some militia-women still in the front rank, but their numbers
were now few; they were more usually to be found as orderlies,
cooking and washing behind the lines. George Orwell corroborates that
by late December, there were still women serving in the militias,
although not many. He adds that attitudes to them had changed. In the
early days, many women had gone to the front as soon as they could
get hold of a mechanic's overall (15), the sight of armed women won
applause and admiration where it was not taken as a matter of course.
Whereas then, no-one would have seen anything comic in a woman
handling a gun, militiamen now had to be kept out of the way when
women were drilling because they tended to laugh at the women and put
them off. One POUM (Partida Obrera de Unificacion Marxista - Workers'
Party of Marxist Unification) position on Orwell's section of the
front was an object of fascination because of three militia-women who
did the cooking, and was put out of bounds to men of other companies.
The difference from the atmosphere of a few months earlier might
be manifested in changes of dress - reappearance of garments that
might be considered "bourgeois", girls in Barcelona in January '37 no
longer hesitating to wear their prettiest clothes (16) - or manners,
with "comrade" no longer the only acceptable form of address (17),
but it had a political context. "Dual Power", when the collectives
co-existed with a largely ineffectual government, had given way to
the Popular Front government's consolidation and extension of
control. The informal leadership of the CNT-FAI had decided to enter
the government. (18) With more-or less heart-searching and
rationalisation, they participated in the legalising, take-over and
eventual suppression of the revolutionary gains, and paved the way
for the Communist Party.
Federica Monseny, after some hesitation, accepted the appointment
of Minister of Health. Coming from an anarchist family background,
she had become prominent in the FAI and was regarded as one of the
best orators of the movement. Later, she was to win the reputation of
being the only government Minister prepared to discuss the
participation frankly and critically (19), even if not unequivocally.
Her utterances include claims that the CNT were quite ingenuous in
politics; that direct intervention in the Central Government was
considered as the most far- reaching revolution made in the political
and economic field; and that the state had been conceded a little
credit and confidence in order to achieve a revolution from above,
At best, some reforms were achieved: legalisation of abortion,
under controlled conditions, and the setting up of refuges open to
all women, including prostitutes. Federica Montseny opposed the idea
of dealing with prostitution by law, believing that it "presents a
problem of moral, economic and social character, which cannot be
resolved juridically" (20). A law of the Republic in June 1935
had banned prostitution, in such a way as to penalise the women
concerned, during the revolution emphasis was more on educating out
of prostitution, but it was not eliminated. (21) The extent to which
the Minister of Health was herself committed to farther-reaching
sexual revolution is doubtful, in the light of an interview with
Kaminski. (22) Here she appeared as permissive towards birth control,
but did not think that Spanish women would wish to use it (though
there was probably an element of realism in this), did not believe in
easy divorce, and considered that women would always enjoy
"compliments" (i.e. sexist comments), incredulous at the
suggestion that these might be thought insulting, Apparently she did,
however, support the dissemination of birth-control information, as
did Mujeres Libres.
The government also took steps to regulate marriage customs.
Marriages had been celebrated at militia headquarters with the
minimum of bother; those dating from July 18 or after were recognised
as legal. (23) In April 1937 "marriage by usage" was
instituted, whereby co-habitation for ten months, or less if
pregnancy occurred, was considered as marriage. This decree was
reversed due to the ensuing prevalence of bigamy.
As well as attending to details of social life, the government was
preoccupied with the organisation of the war effort. A more "normal"
wartime situation was setting in, with women coming to the fore to
make up lacks in manpower. Another wartime feature was the
inevitability of shortages. In the absence of rationing, women had to
form queues for bread from 4 a.m. (although on Sundays the queue
might be of women and men in equal numbers.) Food queues were
controlled and harassed by Civil Guards on horseback (24), and in two
serious bread riots in Barcelona early in 1937, crowds of mostly
women were dispersed by rifle butts. Between July '36 and March '37
the cost of living doubled while wages rose by only 15%. In April '37
women in Barcelona held a demonstration on the issue of food prices.
To the external-causes of hardship were added the developing
conflicts within the anti-fascist camp. The Communist Party, an
insignificant group in Spanish politics at the start of the civil
war, was extending its sphere of activity and tightening its hold on
the Republican forces, backed by Russian military and political
intervention. Women were a priority target, along with youth and
cultural circles, when it came to making converts. Front
organisations included the Union of Girls, Anti-Fascist Women, and
the Union of Young Mothers. In July '37 JSU (Union of Socialist
Youth) cells included 29,021 among women. (25)
A physical clash came in the Barcelona May Days, 1937, when an
attack on the Telephone Exchange by government forces intent on
"disarming the rearguard" provoked fierce resistance. Once
again the value of libertarian-participation in government - for the
government - was demonstrated. At a time when, after three days
fighting, it has been estimated that libertarian comrades and the
POUM controlled four-fifths of Barcelona (26), the CNT-FAI leaders
were called in to cool the situation. Appeals from Mariano Vasquez,
Secretary of the National Committee of the CNT, and Garcia Oliver, an
anarchist Minister of Justice, failed to pacify the workers. Federica
Montseny was then sent on behalf of the Valencia Government (it had
moved from Madrid with the Nationalist advance) after troops had been
withdrawn from the front to send to Barcelona if necessary. She had
obtained the government's agreement that "these forces were not to
be sent until such time as the Minister of Health should judge it
necessary to do so," thus envisaging the possibility that an
anarchist Minister might give the O.K. for troops to be used against
the working class. The net result was confusion, demoralisation, and
concessions from the CNT side.
The "leading militants" seem to have taken the view that it was
playing the enemy's game to give the Communist Party an excuse for
attacking its opponents. Whether or not it needed an excuse, the
fizzling out of the May Days' brief explosion enabled the CP to
strengthen its position, forcing the anarchist Ministers into
opposition and proscribing the POUM. Women were among its victims -
those arrested included hospital nurses and wives of POUM members.
Emma Goldman visited six female "politicals" in the women's prison,
including Katia Landau, who urged anti-fascist prisoners to hunger
strike and was herself released after two hunger strikes.
International Dimension
Internationally, the appeal of the Spanish Civil War was
compounded of romantic exhortations and invocations of legality,
which soon obscured the revolutionary aspects of the struggle in
"anti-fascist" rhetoric. This was the deliberate policy of the
Popular Front/CP elements (29), and to recognise it is not to
disparage the motives of those who answered the call. The first
English volunteer to be killed was Felicia Browne, a CP painter shot
in Aragon in August. Other women among the early volunteers were
Renee Lafont, a French socialist journalist who died after being
wounded in an ambush and captured, and Simone Weil, who was with the
Durutti Column in Catalonia from August to October '36.
In Britain, a hodge-podge of supportive organisations were set up
under various auspices, with women heavily involved. The Defendants'
Aid Committee, for the welfare of British volunteers' families, was
founded by Mrs Charlotte Haldane of the CP and counted among its
supporters the Duchess of Atholl, Ellen Wilkinson and Sybil
Thorndike. Another CP woman, Isobel Brown, was behind the British
Committee for the Relief of Victims of Fascism, which inspired the
creation of the British Medical Aid Committee and Medical Aid Unit.
Mrs Leah Manning, a British Socialist ex-MP, was in the last civil
plane to reach Madrid when it was threatened, and offered her
services as a propagandist in Britain for the saving of the city.
Libertarians were more aware of the social struggle. They were
kept informed by the anarchist newspaper Spain and the World,
which even included references to women from time to time; a report
from Mujeres Libres; mention of the importance of mothers as
educators, and the necessity of freeing them from religion; the
caption to a picture - "Spanish Women, too, enjoy Freedom: The
Church will dictate no more" (2- 7-37). Emma Goldman, official
delegate of the CNT-FAI in Britain, estimated in an interview
(6-1-37) that women had not yet been given the chance to contribute
much, and were insufficiently awakened and advanced; she judged that
they had changed since 1929 however, becoming more alert and
interested in social struggle. An article in the issue of 24-11-37
described the "Transformation of Spanish women" in terms of
former backwardness due to Arabian influence and the domination of
the Catholic Church, maintained by masculine authority and female
resignation, now giving way to a "magnificent and painful
awakening".
But even Emma Goldman and other writers in Spain and the
World, despite their awareness of what was going on (e.g.
19-7-37' "Counterrevolution at Work), tended to place increasing
emphasis on "antifascism" first and foremost. The militarisation of
the militias, attacks on elements, and suppression of the collectives
left less and less that libertarians-could point to as positive. At
the same time, a paradoxical determination was engendered to foster
the idea of a vital struggle against fascism, so that everything that
had been gone through would not appear useless. Of course it was
possible to take the position that anything was better than fascism,
but the "anything" one thereby helped to bring about was not the
social revolution.
Under Fascism
In the event, the question of exactly what order of disaster would
have resulted from a Republican victory and the impossibility of
reviving a revolution that had been killed off, remained academic.
Instead, Spain was overtaken by the alternative disaster of a fascist
victory. While left politics might not have brought about women's
liberation, a right-wing regime meant its antithesis.
But there were women on the fascist side, not all of them duped or
submissive auxiliaries. The Falange included women's movements, both
Carlists and Falange had women's unions, and the Nazi Women's
Organisation was active in Spain. Pillar Primo de Rivera was
prominent in one of the factions opposed to Franco among the
ideological assortment in the Nationalist camp, and ran the Auxilio
Social founded by the widow of a Falangist leader in 1936. This
organisation mobilised women for social work with means provided by
Falangist women Later, formal social service was instituted for women
aged 17 to 35. In theory voluntary, a minimum of six months'
continuous service or six successive periods of at least one month
became a pre-requisite for taking exams and getting administrative
jobs. Married women, widows with one child or more, and the disabled
were exempt, in accordance with reactionary assumptions about the
"sacred warmth of the family" and the position of women in the home.
Women provided the Nationalist army with the usual nursing,
cooking and laundry services, and a few may have served in the army
as such (30), but their participation was less noticeable on the
right than on the left. The contrast was remarked. In Vigo, occupied
by the Nationalists, scarcely a woman was to be seen out in the
streets. (31) The Nationalists too were aware of a difference: a memo
found on one of their officers recommended that since large numbers
of women were fighting on the enemy side, there was to be no
distinction of sex in repression. Some did make a distinction,
reserving special vituperation for the women who opposed them - most
notorious was General Queipo de Llano, who raved against them and
threatened the "wives of anarchists and communists"
(significantly not assumed to be anarchists and communists in their
own right) in his radio broadcasts from Seville, in terms that have
been characterised as "sexual psycho-pathology".
Less hysterical forms of counter-liberatory action were practised
and preached from the start, from suppression of the Republic's
secular measures, including divorce, to a purity campaign on matters
of dress, and the banning of bare legs. Spanish women were to be
conditioned to accept a traditional submissive role. School was seen
as an institution where young girls could learn their "lofty
duties" in family and home.
This emphasis has continued, although economic pressures have led
to more women working outside the home. To bring the story more up to
date, a general book on Spain published in 1969 (32) gives some facts
and figures:
a) the percentage of Spanish labour made up by women
rose from 7% to 17% between 1950 and 1965 - this compares with 25% in
Italy, 31% in the UK;
b) three-quarters of women employed were in the most menial,
mechanical, low-paid work, although there was no legal disability as
such;
c) only between a quarter and a third of university students were
women, although equal numbers of boys and girls went to first
schools;
d) there were three women professors, three women in the Cortes;
e) A husband's formal permission was required before his wife
could take a job, and might be withheld because the marriage
allowance, payable after a second child, was forfeited if the wife
worked.
Women have continued to resist. When the Republic was defeated,
many joined the stream of refugees, opting for exile. At the French
frontier, women and children were separated from men, to be housed in
barns and empty buildings, women were given 8 francs a day, enough to
buy food when pooled, and communal kitchens were set up. Later, women
were interned at Argeles-sur-Mer, where there was a high rate of
infant mortality. Such an existence was nevertheless preferred to
life under fascism; incidents were recorded of women committing
suicide with their children from a train returning refugees to Spain
from occupied France. (33) Isabel de Palencia, who had been Minister
Plenipotentiary for Republican Spain to Sweden and Finland from 1936
to 1939 and lived in exile in Mexico, wrote in 1945 that there were
still eight jails for women political prisoners in Madrid. She cited
a Falange newspaper report of a baptism ceremony in 1940 for 280
infants born in jail
More than twenty years later, Miguel Garcia described how wives of
political prisoners had occupied churches in support of a hunger
strike, and had to be dislodged by the forces of public order. (34)
Lists of recent arrestees in recent years have included women, eg.
Front Libertaire des Luttes de Classes, February '75, gives the names
of three women among "Twenty Revolutionary Militants who could
face the death penalty". The odds against them may be judged from
the following: "In Spain it is still part of the Civil Code that
"for reasons of matrimonial harmony, the husband is the decision
maker as his natural, religious and historical right"... a
Spanish married woman needs her husband's written permission to
transfer property, appear as a witness in court, apply for a
passport, sign a contract, or start her own bank account.
No statement in Spain may be spoken or written in favour of
divorce, abortion or the use of contraceptives. The penalties for
taking part in feminist action are so severe as to be incredible.
Simply participating in a discussion of women's problems can result
in several years in jail.
"Recently, a Spanish woman was sentenced to two years and four
months in prison after police discovered feminist literature in her
flat. Her husband, who was apolitical, was given the same sentence.
According to Spanish legal theory a woman cannot act on her own, her
husband must therefore be responsible for her actions," --
Freedom, 4.11.72, based on a report in Ramparts.
Conclusions
Until comparatively recently, it was almost necessary to justify
the term "Revolution" in connection with the Spanish events of 1936
and after, so thoroughly had the social aspects of the struggle been
obscured, (35) It might still have to be defended against purists who
disparage the collectivisation as "self-managed capitalism".
Even if this description were strictly accurate from a narrowly
economistic viewpoint, to deny any other significance to what
happened would be to adopt blinkers. Neither can the failure to
abolish "legitimate" government negate the value of the experience -
"dual power" is a feature of revolutions. In spite of - and because
of - its limitations, the Spanish Revolution requires and repays
critical study.
In times of intensified social change, especially war and
revolution, women are generally seen to be fulfilling new roles,
acquiring a new view of themselves, and forcing changes in society's
view of them. This can be taken as an index of the extent to which
they are suppressed and restricted in "normal" times, and the
consequent waste of potential. Reversion to normality often brings
women back to their former position, or near it. The demonstration of
what women can achieve is effectively forgotten - which is one reason
for documenting and analysing such periods. The history of women,
however, has to be rescued not only from obscurity, but from two
contrasting strands of attention it receives from time to time: the
patronising line about women doing a grand job, being one hundred per
cent behind the men (where else?); and the countertendency, which
occasionally comes over in women's liberation writings, to regard
everything done by women as good and beautiful by definition.
In Spain, then, women were involved on all sides - no surprise,
but perhaps worth making explicit in view of current slogans about
"supporting our sisters in struggle" and the assumption that
difference of sex is somehow fundamental. Did women in the Spanish
Revolution have less - fundamentally - in common with men who shared
their class situation and political commitment than they had with
their notional "sisters" on the fascist side? All those women might
have suffered in some degree from male domination, but there was no
perspective for their uniting on that basis to achieve liberation.
On the other hand, liberation was not achieved by the spontaneous
working out of social contradictions, even with the resistance of a
strong libertarian movement. It may even be correct to judge, as
Temma Kaplan did (36), that "There is no reason to believe that
the condition of Spanish women would have been fundamentally changed
if the anarchists had won the war". But it is difficult to
project the precise implications- of such a victory, and in my view
she tends to exaggerate the reluctance of libertarians to envisage
changes in sex roles and values. Nevertheless, her article raises
important points, indicating the factors which prevented the
transformation of the lives of Spanish working class women.
The inhibiting factors were rooted in the pre-revolutionary
situation. Libertarians were aware of how capitalist society
exploited women, but, to quote Temma Kaplan, "They did not develop
a programme to prevent similar exploitation in revolutionary
society." The liberation of women had not been thought in
theoretical and practical terms. It is not clear whether the moves
towards more liberated sexuality were due to much more than a refusal
of church and state forms (marriage). The willful lack of clarity
which bedevils libertarian movements, and was to prove fatal in
confrontation with the hard politics of the CP, had consequences here
too. And if libertarians failed to confront their internalised
repression, for the majority of the population the weight of
inherited tradition must have been practically overwhelming.
In Temma Kaplan's view, women revolutionaries subordinated their
specific demands in the interests of winning the war; she implies a
contrast between this policy and that of the anarchists as a whole.
In fact, anarchists in general did go along with the Popular Front to
a great extent. Eventually, they voiced their differences with the CP
and made the conflict for a time explicit - but their libertarian
programme was subordinated and submerged. Their revolution was lost a
considerable time before the war was lost. Glossing over real
differences for fear of dividing the movement means that the tougher,
dominant ideology triumphs by default: authoritarianism wins over
libertarian socialism, male domination over women's liberation. This
lesson is particularly relevant to movements orientated against what
appears as an obvious "greater evil".
The fate of women in revolution is closely connected with the fate
of the revolution as a whole, In Spain, there were initial gains,
even if partial, limited and fragmented (it could be argued that the
lives of Spanish men were not totally transformed either);
stabilisation set in with the wartime situation, to be followed by
reverses; defeat brought reaction. But the fate of women must not be
left as a neglected, subordinate factor, or the social revolution, as
well as the women's cause, will be diminished and damaged.
How relevant for us than the question of what might have happened
if... , is the question of what happens now. There are some grounds
for calculated optimism: society is that much more advanced, the
crisis of authority that much more acute, Recent years have brought
the development of the women's liberation movement, raising issues of
inescapable significance for all revolutionaries, and furthering
discussion of them. At least there are some things our male comrades
could not now get away with, and, it is to be hoped, would not wish
to impose. And - again hopefully - we have the beginnings of a
libertarian movement which can expect to have credibility and to
develop towards a new vision of society only if the liberation of
women is an integral part of its perspectives
Acknowledgement
Thanks are due to all those who lent books and other material,
also to comrades at Freedom Press for the chance to peruse their
files of Spain and the World, and to a correspondent in Mujeres
Libres in Exile.
More on the
Women in the Spanish
revolution
1. Good examples of what can be done in this field are: Edith
Thomas The Women Incendiaries (New York I966, London. 1967 - about
the Paris Commune) and Sheila Rowbotham's work, e.g. Women.
Resistance and Revolution.
2. Arthur Koestler gives the average daily wage of an
agricultural labourer as 3 pesetas, equal to about 1 pound at the
time (Spanish Testament, Gollanz, 1937), and a women's wage as
half that, ie. 6d for working from sunrise to sunset. Burnett
Bolloten (The Grand Camouflage, New York, 1961) cites the instance
of a Seville village where women gathering chick-peas from 3 a.m.
till 12 noon earned one peseta.
3. One of the many "incidents" of the early 30's was the
shooting of Juanita Rico, a Young Socialist, by Pila Primo de
Rivera (daughter of the former Dictator and sister of the
Falangist leader) 70,000 attended the funeral. In June 1936
Dolores Ibarruri was one of the 17 CP delegates in the Cortes; her
autobiography (They Shall Not Pass, New York, 1966) gives details
of political activity by Spanish women "Against War and Fascism",
ie. in CP orientated organizations.
4. An impression of anarcho-syndicalists' attitudes to women
is conveyed in the novel Seven Red Sundays by Ramon J. Sender,
(Penguin, 1938).
5. George Orwell, Homage to Catolonia (Gollanou, 1938); p 11
in Penguin edition.
6. Gaston Leval estimated that women were getting equal wages
in about half the collectives - extract fron Espagne Libertaire in
Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives: Self-Management in
the Spanish Revolution, 1936-9, Free Life Ediions, New York, 1974)
- a very useful collection of material on the subject.
7. Figures in Broué and Témime, The Revolution
and Civil War in Spain.
8. Ibid., quoting Leval.
9. "Anarchist Agrarian Collectives in the Spanish Civil War",
in Raymond Carr, ed., The Republic and the Civil War in Spain
(London; 1971).
10. Both writers are among those represented in Dolgoff's
Anarchist Collectives.
11. Borkenau, The Sranish Cockpit (Faber 193?),
12. Report from the Madrid Group of Mujeres Libres, in Spain
and the Revolution, 25.8.37, which includes the statements of
their position. More information on the group is given in Temma F.
Kaplan's article "Spanish Anarchism and Women's Liberation"
(Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1971) - a
contribution highly relevant to the subject of this pamphlet.
13. See Gilbert Cox, The Defence of Madrid (Gollanez,, 1937)
14. Mundo Obrero, 7.11.36, quoted in Hugh Thomas, The Spanish
Civil War (Penguin I965), p.406.
15. Alrarez del Vayo, Freedom's Battle (London I940).
16. Borkenau, p.I75.
17. See Orwell, pp.8-9, on earlier atmosphere.
18. The anarchists' role vis-a-vis the government is
critically discussed by Vernon Richards in Lessons of the Spanish
Revolution (Freedom Press, 1972).
19. Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage (New York, 1961) -
a thorough documentation of how the CP took over.
20. Quoted by Temma Kaplan, J.C.H, VI,2,p. 108.
21. In besieged Mdrid, according to Gilbert Cox, prostitutes
were few but had little spare time.
22. Quoted in Gilbert Jackson, The Spanish Republic and Civil
War (Princetown I965). The tone of this conflicts somewhat with
Temma Kaplan's impression.
23. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, p.244. Actually, he writes
"any marriage between militiamen", but it is doubtful whether the
Republic was that permissive.
24. Orwell, pp188-89.
25. S. G. Payne, The Spanish Revolution (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, I970). This compares with 70,080 peasant cells, 14,213
students', and 28,021 workers'.
26. Leval, in Dolgoff's Anarchist Collectives, p. 60
27. Peirats, quoted by Vernon Richards, p. 133.
28. Spain and the World, 10.I2.37.
29. As documented by Bolloten and others.
30. Temma Kaplan says, without giving a source for the
statement, that they did (p.106), but the phenomenon cannot have
been widespread. See Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, p.409, note 2,
on the reaction of an Irish Lieutenant who fought for the
Nationalists: "Women at the battle seemed to him the final
degradation of the Republican side."
31. Koestler, Spanish Testament. ibid, for description of de
Llano.
32. S. Clissold, Spain (Thames & Hudson, 1969).
33. Isabel de Palencia, Smouldering Freedom (Gollancz, I946).
34. Miguel Garcia, Spanish Political Prisoners (Freedom Press,
1970).
35. See Noam Chomsky, "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" in
American Power and the New Mandarins, (New York, 1967).
36. J. C. H., VI, 2, p. 102.
Text history:
Originally published October 15, 1975, by Solidarity, London :
This text is a based on a version of the text at
http://www.geocities.com/anarchist_federation/ - I've proofread this
text and made a number of corrections here
|
|
