Female University Students in Antifrancoism. Women, Student Movement and Feminism, 1960-1975

Abstract

The collective experience of the female Spanish university students who protested against the francoist dictatorship is not well known, unlike in the sixties and the seventies there was a mass intake of women into the Spanish university and a significant number of them became involved in the protests there, a few of whom reached positions of leadership within the university organizations. In addition, in the student movement new habits and personal relationships took on importance. In this paper, we raise the question of whether this more balanced composition and these new interests really led to significant changes. Finally, we reflect upon the tension between the fantasy of equality and the frequent cases of discrimination in the universities. We also consider how the experience of militancy in the student movement influenced the young women who began to take an interest in feminism and soon joined women’s groups. This text approaches these themes from a methodological perspective which incorporates the intersection between the categories of gender, age and class.