{"id":903,"date":"2014-09-14T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T08:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=903"},"modified":"2014-09-14T10:52:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T08:52:18","slug":"the-use-of-timelines-about-producing-one-on-women-and-feminism-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/09\/14\/the-use-of-timelines-about-producing-one-on-women-and-feminism-in-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"THE USE OF TIMELINES: ABOUT PRODUCING ONE (ON WOMEN AND FEMINISM IN SPAIN) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am very fond of timelines. I find that one of the problems of the post-traditional model of education is that it has condemned memorizing as a useless nuisance. This leads to a great deal of imprecision regarding exact historical dates, which in its turn produces a hazy impression of historical periods. Without learning particular dates one may think that the whole 20th century is an undifferentiated mass of events with just a few major highlights. Thus, it is not rare in Spain for young persons to name incorrectly the years when the disgraceful Civil War took place (1936-9) and to suppose that Franco\u2019s brutal regime ended much earlier than 1975.<\/p>\n

The problem with timelines is that they are actually of little use for study. You may check a detail or two, take a general look \u2013but who can read a timeline in detail and absorb all that information? This is why I find that timelines only help us to memorise dates if you produce them yourself. Hence, I am always producing new ones in my own study time. It is not easy.<\/p>\n

I am currently working on a timeline which, here\u2019s the contradiction, I might eventually publish in my website. I realised that I know more about British and American women\u2019s history than about Spanish and Catalan women. This is why I decided to start a local timeline and later on add to it the key dates in US and UK feminism. My timeline is currently 45 pages long, I can say I have already learned very much but I do not know yet where to stop. <\/p>\n

In principle, I decided to include key general political events (my grasp of Spanish History is not that good…), and dates connected with women\u2019s advances (mainly legislation, education, labour). I decided not to include literature, only books connected with the \u2018woman question.\u2019 The problem came when I realized that, as Isa\u00edas Lafuente hints, domestic innovations \u2013like the mop, invented by Manuel Jal\u00f3n and first commercialised in 1958\u2013 and others, like sanitary pads (no reliable date so far) may have changed women\u2019s lives much more deeply than certain pieces of legislation. <\/p>\n

Then, I came across a website on the evolution of the women\u2019s liberation movement in Spain during the 1960s and 1970s, and it was so dense with dates that my using them would automatically require the same for all periods. Finally, guess what? The hardest periods to reconstruct are the most recent ones. I don\u2019t know the date when gay marriage was introduced in Spain. Um. It\u2019s 3 July 2005 (just checked).<\/p>\n

One thing that is quite clear, reading Geraldine Scanlon\u2019s impressive pioneering study La Pol\u00e9mica Feminista en la Espa\u00f1a Contempor\u00e1nea 1868-1974<\/em>, published in 1976, and Pilar Folguera\u2019s slim but very information collective volume, Feminismo en Espa\u00f1a: Dos Siglos de Historia<\/em> (1988), is that Spain is also different when it comes to how our feminism compares with the rest of the Western world. <\/p>\n

Both volumes make it very clear that there was no feminism movement as such until, properly speaking, the 1970s. We had formidable individual figures (Concepci\u00f3n Arenal, Emilia Pardo Baz\u00e1n, Clara Campoamor…), many associations of different signs but no all-encompassing movement. When the chance came for that, after Franco\u2019s death, the \u2018Transici\u00f3n\u2019 took much of he necessary political energy away from the movement. At any rate, believe it or not, this is the best historical moment ever for women in Spain. Hopefully, the women living in the 22nd century will find ours still an obscure time.<\/p>\n

If anyone cares, this is a rough division into main periods of women\u2019s history and feminism in Spain:<\/p>\n

*1724-1868: Enlightenment ideas enter Spain (with the French Bourbon dynasty). Men who believe in them, and a few women, start a very timid reform of public education for women (primary and professional levels, schools for teachers).
\n*1868-1939 Individual women feminists fight for the rights of women (access to secondary and higher education, and the professions); also, with much division, the vote. Many feminist associations are formed in the 1920s, none major. Brief period of fast advances under the Republic (vote and divorce 1931) and the Civil War.
\n*1939-1965 Franco\u2019s military regime imposes traditional ideals of womanhood. Women are split into meekly following these ideals, or struggling to end the dictatorship (clandestine resistance organised by left-wing political parties and women\u2019s illegal associations)
\n *1965-1982 Full emergence of the feminist liberation movement, particularly after 1975. Women are split mainly on class lines between the need to consolidate left-wing policies and the need to work specifically for women\u2019s gains.
\n*1983-2014\u2026 Institutionalised feminism (after PSOE wins 1982 election). Legislation becomes the main tool for equality, together with education, supported by widespread social acceptance of the main feminist tenets (feminist activism remains fragmented in a myriad organizations).<\/p>\n

Um\u2026 2014-2044\u2026 Full equality of rights and opportunities is reached for women of all classes, mysogyny is considered a relic as intolerable as cannibalism. Gender divisions become irrelevant as all, men and women, face life from the same position.<\/p>\n

Now back to the timeline…<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB<\/a>. Visit my web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a>
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I am very fond of timelines. I find that one of the problems of the post-traditional model of education is that it has condemned memorizing as a useless nuisance. This leads to a great deal of imprecision regarding exact historical dates, which in its turn produces a hazy impression of historical periods. Without learning particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria","tag-gender-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}