Women of Salamanca. Academia, society and culture

Abstract

This research was carried out during a 2017 sabbatical spent at the University of Salamanca. My objectives were to recover the historical memory of the early figures of the feminist struggle in that university and its context in the years of Spain’s transition to democracy, elucidate the processes through which women sought institutional empowerment over almost four decades, and explain the diverse interests that converged in different ways to understand women’s rights and the integral insertion of women into domains of academic and social life. The study had two axes: first, to ascertain the convergence-divergence of interests among Salamancan women from the 1960s to 1990s, especially between two groups of militants, one social, the other academic, where the variables of social class and professional formation became apparent; and, second, to reconstruct the paths that women professors took to improve their status and gain recognition for their contributions to science in Spain’s oldest and most conservative university, by creating a Centre for Women’s Studies (Cemusa) at the dawn of the new century. The methodology involved rescuing the voices of women citizens, housewives and long-serving professors who narrated their lives as social fighters. The review of documents, pamphlets, photographs, videos and the collection of Cemusa’s publications facilitated recreating the life of Salamanca, its university and its women.