The different natures of women and men

For twentieth-century Spanish conservatism, gender was based on the belief in two different natures: one female and the other male. This idea was established as an absolute truth and became the cornerstone of conservative thinking with regard to society and gender. It also served as a basis for the construction of a model for social organization that guaranteed discrimination against women and their subordination. The inspiration for this thinking was, among other sources, the postulates of Catholic social doctrine, in which inequality between women and men was firmly grounded, at least until the Second Vatican Council met in the first half of the 1960s. The encyclical issued by Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris in 1878, asserted that ‘the inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature […] so also has he appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing in dignity, rights and power’ (Noguer, 1923 pp. 290-306).

Throughout the century, this political culture equated women and men with different organs of a social body in which each nature was called upon to fulfil its own, different function. One example is Víctor Pradera, who combined the Catholic, traditionalist political inheritance with the modern organicist conception of society. His ideas, which were similar to those of some prestigious European intellectuals like the Krausist Heinrich Ahrens, were fortified by some of his own experiences. Pradera argued that society ‘by its very nature belongs to the world of the organic’. Indeed, this author found the guiding principle of social life in the organism: ‘the organic world postulates varied organs and different functions’. Consequently, ‘a universal aspiration for equal rights between men and women among citizens […] would result in social dissolution’ (Pradera, 1932). Some 45 years later, in the midst of the transition to democracy, Manuel Fraga would continue to insist on this organicist idea of society, in which each sex is called upon to fulfil its ‘natural’ role.

Science became a source of inspiration for the construction of differences between the genders. The thesis of female inferiority based on phrenology, anatomy and physiology, and popularized by the works of Franz Joseph Gall, Herbert Spencer, Theodor von Bischoff and Karl Möbius, was replaced by the thesis of the difference between the sexes (Aresti, 1998). These new scientific explanations reached Spain quickly and were rapidly accepted by the more conservative political sectors. The ideas most often repeated in Spanish intellectual circles came from the work of Robby Kossman, which was inspired by evolutionist theory, and Georg Simmel’s explanations regarding the differences between the sexes (Beriain, 2000). Simmel argued that femaleness could be defined as a gender and could easily elude any definition as an individual. This thinking was echoed in Spain by José Ortega y Gasset, who asserted that ‘woman is more of a gender than an individual’ (Ortega y Gasset, 1947 p. 433, cited in Castillo, 2003). This argument quite closely mirrored those held by the Catalan Eugeni D’Ors and the Andalusian José María Pemán.

The central idea in Pemán’s work was the difference and hierarchy between the sexes, and it was this author who best portrayed the image of feminity maintained by conservatism. His book, De doce cualidades de la mujer (On the Twelve Qualities of Women), included many of the impressions already printed in the weekly publication Ellas (She, (1932-1935), which he both founded and directed. He asserted that, as laid out in Genesis, the function of women was to be companions to their husbands and nurturers of their children, which is why God had not given them ‘reason’. The function of men was creative activity and work, for which he required rational analysis (Pemán, 1947).[9]

Literature and propaganda also reproduced the old clichés about woman as the ‘eternal minor’ and her inferior intellectual capacity.[10] For example, in an 1894 speech, Doctor Fernando Calatraveño discussed the inferiority of ‘the woman’ who ‘can never be more than a woman, with her naivety, like that of an older child, her exaggerated nervous system, her extremely vivid imagination, her limited thinking, her innate coquetry’(Calatraveño, 1894, cited in Ballarín, 2001 p. 79). Philosopher and pedagogue Urbano González Serrano, in turn, based his arguments on biological determinism in order to combat any hint of egalitarianism in the education of women: ‘neither education nor any philosophical principle can change the physiological nature of the sex […] woman is woman; she is first and foremost the incarnation of love’.[11]

During the Franco dictatorship, these openly antifeminist ideas were transmitted across Spain through the Sección Femenina, the women’s branch of the Falange political movement, and the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, a public foundation established to ensure moral order, as a control mechanism.[12] Moreover, despite the ‘renewing’ doctrine of the Second Vatican Council, the Church helped by insisting on the concept that domesticity was a woman’s mission. These ideas were maintained by the AP. The party accepted equality – understood as legal equality between women and men – but the dualnature model survived. Although it was forced to make concessions for women, allowing them access to education (saying that it would benefit their children, who would be raised in a more cultured home) and to employment (when necessary for the family finances), and agreeing to integrate women into its ranks (a propaganda move that gave it a modernizing image), the party never abandoned its ideological pillars related to gender (Félez, 2018).

During the transition to democracy, some changes had to be made in response to demands for equality from Spanish women. It was argued that the decision to work outside the home was as laudable as staying home as the ‘pillar of family life’ (AP, 1977 p. 10). For that reason, ‘women’s work at home’ needed to be ‘duly recognized’ (Rodríguez, 1977 p. 59). For women who were forced to work outside the home, the AP proposed a ‘specific work plan with a reduced schedule’ (CD, 1979 p. 10) to respond to the obligations of married women. ‘Pragmatic policies’ were required to meet the specific needs of women, based on their ‘womanly nature’ (AP, 1981 p. 641). Recognition of ‘women’s work’ was demanded, but there was no question that this work was to be done by women, despite the ideas held by members of the women’s movement.

As a reflection of this new stance, one renowned member of the AP, Pilar Díaz-Plaja, averred that women after a certain age who had already raised their children could collaborate with their husbands ‘in their companies, their work or whatever’. In no way, however, would this activity entail her abandoning ‘her family duties and home’ (Giráldez, 1978). Thus, without the burden on women inherent in reproduction, Spanish women were positioned as mere collaborators in public life.

Women and anti-women, feminism and antifeminism

One of the most important manifestations and reflections of modernity was the growing role of women in society (Thébaud, 2000). Women’s suffrage and the possibility of participating in political activity arrived first with the Second Republic in the 1930s and then again with the establishment of the parliamentary monarchy in the last third of the twentieth century. Whether advantageous or not, the reality was, as José María Pemán said upon the proclamation of the Republic, that ‘the vote has won women’ (Pemán, 1932 p, 6). This was enough to force conservatives not only to reconstruct their proposed ideal of femininity, but also to construct a discourse capable of influencing women to vote for conservative parties, since they now represented more than half of the electorate. In light of this, the right was obliged to abandon their discussions about whether women leaving the home would ‘bastardize their femininity’ (Lis, 1932 p. 2). The only female deputy from the AP in the first two parliamentary terms insisted that rights for women remained to be won, but without this ‘undermining their femininity’ (Montejano, 1977). The party platform promised to fight for the ‘current needs of Spanish women’, but ‘based on their female nature and without rejecting their traditional and spiritual values’(Alianza Popular, 1982 p. 87-88).

Two models of ‘woman’ were established. The first was the ‘good’ Mary and the second the ‘odious’ Eve, who had come to eliminate traditional gender roles and with that, terminate Western society as it was known. Women began to arouse contradictory feelings of surprise and confusion, due to their presence in spaces once reserved for men and their adoption of unexpected attitudes, a result of the social changes introduced that produced what came to be called ‘gender uncertainty’.[13] To alleviate this and preserve the traditional social structure, the two models of ‘woman’ were given content. There was the ‘true Spanish woman’, an ideal of traditional and patriarchal womanhood, illustrated by historical Spanish women considered illustrious, who were rescued and reconstructed (Ortega, 2010a). These women were presented as authentic, traditional examples of the essential values of ‘eternal Spain’ (Pemán, 1932). The figures evoked included Saint Teresa of Avila, Queen Isabella I and Joanna I of Castile. Other less well-known ‘great and glorious women’ were also exalted because of their many virtues and mercies with the lowly, their Christian femaleness, their spirituality, their cultured wisdom, their humility in greatness, their temperance in power, their modesty and austerity, and their determination in the face of adversity and the enemies of the Catholic religion. All of these heroines of the fatherland had forged an immortal and indestructible Spanish female type.[14]

The journal Ellas. Semanario de las mujeres españolas (She: A Weekly for Spanish Women) contained a section that linked the women of yesteryear to those of the moment by extolling figures with the same desirable features in the eyes of Pemán and the journal editors. The heirs to this spirit included Juana Salas, Pilar Careaga, Blanca de los Ríos and Mercedes Quintanilla, all notable representatives of the most important Catholic women’s associations at the time. Like their predecessors, they were distinguished by their lucid intelligence, their noble Christian virtues, their roles as selfless daughters, wives and mothers and, finally, their efforts to pass down sound Spanish traditions and customs (Luzzatti, 1932 p, 1). This trend of exalting ‘true Spanish women’ was later continued by the heir to conservatism. Manuel Fraga not only commemorated these women, like Pilar Careaga, who he described as an exemplary, highly valuable and intelligent woman,[15] but he also heaped praise upon other women that he considered as distinguished as their predecessors. These included the Countess of Campo-Alange, a woman who, in Fraga’s words, was a ‘writer of the truth about women’ (Fraga, 1980 p. 56). He also mentioned Concepción Arenal[16] as a notable author who knew how to take the postulates of Catholic social doctrine and put them into practice (Fraga, 2006 p. 254).

However, while the idea of a ‘Spanish femininity’ continued during the political transition, mentions of ‘true Spanish women’ disappeared from the official discourse, at least as they were spoken of in the early twentieth century. Given the challenges involved in establishing the democracy and shaping a new female democratic citizenship – understood not only as an expansion of rights and freedoms, but also as a broadening of spaces for women’s participation and action (Radcliff, 2002 pp. 77-78) – housewives were placed in that position instead. For AP, they became the new reference point for femininity, and the party sang their praises at the same time that it called for more recognition of their work, since they were ‘the most important social force in Spain’ for the right. The AP trusted them to ‘maintain the spirit of the fatherland and order in our Spain and return common sense to our people’ (AP Madrid, 1978 p. 4). The idea of regenerating the Spanish fatherland through true Spanish women – housewives this time – lived on.[17]

The image of the ‘anti-woman’ or ‘anti-Spanish women’ constructed in the years prior to the Civil War also lived on.[18] These anti-women were represented by females who had decided to participate in circles that had been exclusively male to that point. Some, who adopted the forms or manners of modernity and were known as garçonnes, were attracted to and supported feminism. The anti-women, then, became the negative version of ‘true Spanish women’. They were riddled with horrible defects and symbolized vulgarity, sexual deviation, mannishness, heresy and revolution, and belonged to subversive, politicized groups.[19] They were also credulous and naïve women, incapable of distinguishing between good and evil (Cernuda, 1932 p. 3), but also cold, calculating and lewd (Pérez, 1932a p. 9). Far from disappearing, this image was very much present during the transition period. The second feminist wave, represented by the women’s liberation movement, was surprising because of its radicalism. The movement analysed the patriarchal system from all possible angles and – unlike the first feminist wave, which focused on conquering the public space and expanding citizenship rights for women – made the sexual revolution the benchmark of the era.

The response was not long in coming. AP warned of the need to design a specific, pragmatic and realistic policy that would respond to the requirements of ‘Spanish women’, based on protecting her female nature from being bastardized. Fraga was concerned about the new garçonnes of the 1970s. As he himself stated, ‘the current trend of girls wearing “unisex” trousers, having short hair and using verbal violence with each other that is appropriate for young men is not a step forward’. In his opinion, the emancipation of women was ‘a thing, and a very good one’, but the feminism and ‘anarchy’ that came with it was a completely different matter (Fraga, 1976 p. 95).

Statements like this revealed the continuing persistence of the duality that had been constructed in the 1930s between ‘real’ Spanish women and enemies of the fatherland, but also between Catholic/humanist feminism and leftist feminism. The association made by Fraga about feminism and anarchy seemed to echo the past, when feminism was presented as an ally of communism and an anti-Spain that would end up destroying the family by separating women from domestic work and caretaking, leading them to public life and production. During the Second Republic, emancipation was considered a satanic desire, spread by socialists, anarchists, freemasons and Krausists with a single objective: to degrade the ‘true woman’ and destroy Christian civilization[20] or seek ‘social dissolution’ at any cost (Pradera, 1932). Like Fraga would do later, deputy Diego María Crehuet y del Amo accused feminism of leading ‘in its cardinal principles to anarchy’ (Crehuet, n.d., 46). In the dying days of the Franco era, Manuel Fraga argued that the feminism of that time, which he called neo-feminism, was even worse than the feminism that emerged as part of the suffragist movement, since the earlier movement ‘respected traditional ethical values’, while the later movement ‘sought to destroy them, and if that one was reformist, this one was deeply revolutionary’ (Fraga, 1975 p. 39).

The party members of the AP argued in interviews that feminism was associated with negative connotations and unworthy of Spanish women. Carmen Fraga, the daughter of the party leader, was blunt in this respect: ‘I am not a feminist, a hippy or a protestor’ (Jiménez, 1977). Antonia Quiroga, the head of the AP’s women and family section during the early years, defended some feminist ideas, but again with the proviso that this battle not keep women from maintaining ‘their true feminine nature and their role within the family’. Moreover, in the defence of conservative or traditional femininity against ‘radical’ feminism, it was recommended that women’s liberation be moderated when the woman ‘does not have political or career aspirations or wish for a life outside the home; neither should she be forced to go out, if she is comfortable with her current status’ (Aradillas, 1977). Carmen Llorca, who had been president of the Madrid Athenaeum, unambiguously linked the women’s movement to violence in the presentation of her women’s association: ‘Feminist movements may have a different course, and also have a different strategy. Our strategy is non-violence’ (Nieto, 1977). Similarly, they defended the division between ‘good’, ‘humanist’ or ‘real’ feminism reminiscent of the Catholic feminism at the beginning of the century, and ‘bad’ or ‘radical’ feminism represented by groups advocating the decriminalization of abortion (Aradillas, 1977). To some extent, these women could sympathize with feminism, but within limits when it came to questions related to ‘female nature’.

Conservatism and the family

Conservatism considered the patriarchal family as the ideal institution to quiet the disquiet and trepidation generated by the new times. The social order depended on its stability, solidity, structure and hierarchized functions. If the difference between the sexes and traditional gender roles ceased to exist, society, too, would dissipate. This belief continued in the transition period, since ‘civilizations die when the family disintegrates’ (Anon., 1977 p. 6).

Arguments of this type can be found in the work of Francisco de Asís Pacheco. This prolific publisher and liberal politician from Andalusia was extremely well informed about the attention being paid by certain social sectors to the problem of women’s equality. Convinced that the family constituted a social entity that preceded the individual and was a basic pillar of the state and value system of the “bien-pensant bourgeoisie, he showed no hesitation in presenting the threat inherent in any concession to the equality of the sexes: ‘we trust that women’s emancipation […] will never become history. If it does, if we are mistaken, if our predictions do not come true, then, “Oh, what of the family!” In order to triumph, women’s emancipation will have to pass over its dead body” (Asís, 1881 p. 36).

Between ultra-conservatives and traditionalists, women and the family were clearly part of the organicist philosophy of society and its religious foundation (Moya, 1984). This was the belief of Manuel García Morente, a Catholic philosopher who defended the family and the dichotomy of the sexes at any cost. For Morente, the family was ‘a substantive entity, a distinct entity, independent and superior to the individuals who comprise it’ (García, 1996 p. 113). The primary function of the woman, as daughter, was to ‘maintain family cohesion’, while the second was ‘to maintain family continuity throughout the organism’, or, in other words, to preserve tradition. This could only be done by women, since ‘the essential principle of women is their warm and constant vocation. The father and brothers are the propellant element, those who bring the innovations; if you add your female innovations to those of your father and brothers, there will be no family continuity’ (García, 1996 p. 114). As a wife, the woman was to subordinate herself to her husband, and her primary and only function was motherhood (García, 1996 p. 124).

Like the intellectuals who preceded him, Manuel Fraga saw a serious threat to the family in the scientific and technological advances and cultural and social changes taking place in the 1960s and 70s, with disastrous consequences. Since its constitution as a party, the AP defended the ‘Christian conception of the family and its permanent values’ (AP, 1977 p. 16). For the self-declared heir to sociological Francoism, the state had to protect the family, increasing ‘due protection for this institution’ (GODSA, 1976, 97-98).

In this battle to protect the traditional family, and despite being in the minority in Congress, Manuel Fraga introduced a bill on the Foundations of the Family in the Spanish State in the summer of 1980. The bill defined the family as a ‘permanent institution of natural law that guarantees the ordered perpetuation and integral development of the human species’, in addition to stressing its function as the ‘primary cell of the social organization’ (BOE, 1980 p. 377). This definition of family only strengthened the traditional, Christian conception defended by the AP to that point. Men occupied the highest position in the hierarchy and, therefore, equality in the family continued to be unrecognized. In fact, the electoral propaganda appealed largely to the man as the head of the family: ‘Family father, if you want security for you and yours, Act now! AP’ (AP, 1977).

The conquest of rights by women in post-industrial societies and their entry into the labour force was, according to Fraga, a palpable reality that had allowed them to conceive of life in general in a very different way. This circumstance, however, had its counterpoint. All the political, social, cultural and technological innovation represented by the 1960s and 70s had led to the creation of ‘new problems for family unity and authority inside the family’ (Fraga, 1959 p. 22). This paternal authority was in clear decline in the eyes of the AP leader and was due to the constant acceptance of egalitarian ideals (Folsom, 1934). The change in the family configuration and the new legal mechanisms extending across Europe were also responsible for ‘the problems of women […since…] the root cause is the explosion of the traditional family’ (Fraga, 1959 p. 22). Specifically, the ‘progress of divorce […], the recognition of being unmarried as a normal state of life and aberrations related to sexual matters’ had inaugurated a period of the ‘systematic destruction of the family’ (Fraga, 1959 p. 9). During the transition, divorce was a hobbyhorse for the political right, although the AP ended up accepting it when the debate over legalizing abortion entered the fray.

Conservatism continued to hold positions quite similar to those of the early twentieth century regarding the family, only giving in on divorce at the end of the century.[21] The patriarchal family continued to be promoted, with a nucleus comprising a heterosexual marriage. Meanwhile, women, considered the pillar of the family throughout the century, focused on housework, nurturing and raising children and, generally speaking, reproduction. The discourse on domesticity continued to be found in the ideology of conservatism, as did the defence of a double nature or biological conditioning factors that made women more suitable for this type of work.