Women in Francoist Spain

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Women in Francoist Spain (1939–1978) were the last generation of women to not be afforded full equality under the 1978 Spanish Constitution.^[1] Women during this period found traditional Catholic Spanish gender roles being imposed on them, in terms of their employment opportunities and role in the family. For Republican women, Francoist Spain was a double loss, as the new regime first took away the limited political power and identities as women which they had won during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), and it secondly forced them back into the confines of their homes. Motherhood would become the primary social function of women in Francoist Spain.

Feminism in Spain would be co-opted by the regime, encouraging not liberation, but instead the engagement of pious domesticity. The Castilian Association of Homemakers and Consumers was unique in this period, for trying to co-opt the regime to support women's liberation from the inside.

Some women in the Communist Party of Spain would support violence against the state through armed resistance. Other women found themselves in prisons. Pregnant women in prison often had their children kidnapped by the state, in order for them to be placed in families that supported the government line. Many Republican women went into exile in this period, with a number of them working to support other women in the same position.