Women as a social class: origin and development of a theory. From the Feminist Collectives to the Feminist Party of Spain (1975-1983)

Abstract

The Spanish feminism of the seventies and eighties was part of the feminist tendencies developed in the so-called second wave. Among these trends we can point out materialist feminism, that is, one who, based on Marxist postulates, carried out his own theory about the origin of the exploitation of women and developed different tactics to subvert reality. In Spain, this trend was represented, at first, by the so-called Homologated Collectives of the Spanish State and, later, by the Feminist Party of Spain that developed much more the idea announced by the Collectives: women as a social class. As happened internationally, the formulation of this idea caused different debates among its detractors, especially those related to Marxist feminism for whom Marxist theory could not be extrapolated to the situation of women because the reality of these and of the Working class was totally different. Statement that the organizations mentioned above did not share and that tried to show that women form a social class by being inserted into the domestic production mode.