Women's education in Francoist Spain was based around the belief that women lacked the same intellectual abilities as men and that education should prepare women for lives in the home as wives and mothers.
Literacy rates were low for Spanish women. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were few economic pressures on Spain to encourage women's literacy. Rates largely remained unchanged except for a baseline boost during the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War. The rate did not hit 90% for women until after the end of the dictatorship.
Primary education for women focused on girls' future roles in the home. Reforms in 1945 worked to reinforce this, in particular by making all education segregated by sex and requiring compulsory attendance. By 1954, 33% of all primary school students would be girls. During the Franco period, high school was no longer an extension of primary school. This meant that only girls who persevered could complete their high school education for an opportunity to attend university.
University opportunities were limited for women, as only two careers required a university education, and legal and diplomatic careers were not an option. Women made up only 8.8% of all university students in 1936, and this number would only climb to 23.4% by 1960. Women did not make up more than 50% of all university students until after the collapse of the regime.
National ideology and policy implementation
Francoist ideology held that biologically, women did not have the same intellectual capacity as men. This belief was used to justify discrimination against women. The Franco period represented an end of a period of innovation and revolutionary reforms in Spanish society, which impacted many areas including education. Gregorio Marañón was an influential doctor, cited often by the Franco regime. He believed that education for women was not important, that the only thing a woman should learn was how to support her husband and live in happy co-existence with him while performing her biological role of becoming a mother and thus serving the state's interests. With the backing of these ideas, the regime's primary focus was on educating men.
One of women's roles in Francoist Spain was to educate Spanish children to prevent them from becoming maleducados. The Women's Section promoted the idea that the only people who could educate Spain's youngsters. The impact of this was that Sección Femenina encouraged women into secondary and university education so they could impart knowledge to the next generation. This could become problematic at times as there was a fine line in Falangist thinking between seeking education for practical reasons and seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge in the vein of Second Republic feminists.
Sección Feminina and the Catholic Church had conflicting viewpoints on women and physical activity. Sección Feminina actively encouraged women's sports and women's physical fitness, while the Catholic Church opposed it.
Seminario de Estudios Sociólogics sobre la Mujer was created in 1960. The liberal women's Catholic organization's purpose was end discrimination in education and prepare women to enter the wider Spanish society as members of the workforce, and had connections to 1960s and 1970s Spanish Women's Movement thanks to members like María, Condesa de Campo Alange. It became less important as later Spanish feminism rejected a Catholic-based model.
The 1970 Education Act guaranteed a free education for all Spanish citizens, irrespective of gender. The General law of Education and Financing of the Educational Reform of 1970 provided greater opportunities to women, regardless of their social class across all levels of Spanish education.
With the new Spanish Constitution of 1978, education was guaranteed as a right for all Spaniards. The end of the Franco period saw a demand in many new services from the state as a result of previous suppression of these needs by the regime. This included areas of education.
Literacy During the early 1900s, women's literacy rates tended to be more constant and unchanging compared to men because literate men were much more likely to leave the rural countryside for the big city, depleting smaller rural settlements and lowering male literacy rates. Women were much less likely to migrate to other parts of Spain in this period.Rafael Barquín & Pedro Pérez & Basilio Sanz, 2016. "Literacy in Spain in the 19th century: An econometric analysis," Documentos de Trabajo (DT-AEHE) 1615, Asociacion Española de Historia Economica. Economic demands for an increase in women's literacy rates improvement were also not present in the period between 1860 and 1910 in industries such as education, railways, religion, capital markets and the mining industry. Only in 1910 and only in the railway industry would there be an economic model that necessitated or influenced more women becoming literate. The inverse was true for men, with multiple industries having needs for a literate male population, which resulted in marked increased in male literacy over the same period.
Following the end of the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, there was a stagnation in matriculation and literacy rates for Spanish women. The literacy rate for women was 67% in 1935. The rate had increased to 77% in 1940. It improved more by 1970, with a rate of 88%.
Literacy rates for both men and women in Spain were adversely affected by a number of factors in the early regime period. During the late 1930s, the Francoist government forced a number of bookstores to close because of their supposed connections to liberalism of the Spanish Republic. During the 1940s, there was a paper shortage, which resulted in a major drop in the number of available printed publications. During the 1960s, publishers were afraid to take risks in printing many new novels out of fear of regime interference, even when the established risks were low.
National Literacy Campaign (Decree 24/07/1963) was primarily aimed at assisted men to read in order to increase their productivity in the workforce. As women were not seen as important for increasing entrepreneurship in Spain, the literacy program was largely not aimed at them.
Issues of women's literacy rates trailing that of men would continue well into the period following the establishment of the new Spanish constitution in 1978. By the 2010s, most of the illiterate women were older and, compared to their relative representation in the broader Spanish population, many were Roma. These high rates in post-Franco rate were a result of the regime failing to continue educational policies enacted by the Second Republic. This post-Franco period saw efforts across regional, but not central, governments to provide adult education with a focus on education and supporting adults who failed to matriculate. The post-Franco period saw Spain have some of the highest secondary education drop out rates in the whole of the European Union, with the number of women drop outs being twice the number of their male counterparts. +Literacy rate percentages in Spain from 1800 to 2010The methods of counting vary and are not consistent. When multiple sources are used, a range is used instead of an exact number to account for the difference.YearWomen's literacy rateMen'sTotal populationref182020187030190034 - 5054.343.8191042.462.949.69 - 52.2192052.970.157.12 - 61.2193066.383.068.87 - 74.4193567194071.676.976.83 - 82.8195081.782.66196085.2 - 92.192.786.36 - 88.819708891.20198093.64198191.196.492.8 - 93.7199096.72199196.49200497.165200597.75200797.938200897.630200997.679201097.748
Primary education Education for women focused on girls future roles in the home. First, second and third grade girls all had lessons on bathroom, living room and kitchen arrangement and tidiness. Girls were also taught to maintain their spaces in the classroom and school, with desks, notes and books all being organized. Lessons for girls also discussed the virtue of silence, emphasizing under which circumstances it was appropriate for girls and women to make themselves visible. This included acts such as laughing, sneezing and expressing pain. These lessons were part of a national curriculum during the 1950s that emphasized True Catholic Womanhood.
On 1 May 1939, Franco banned co-education in schools, requiring all classes to be gender segregated. Many Republican teachers were also imprisoned, killed or forced into exile. Francoist thinker Onesimo Redondo said of co-education, "coeducation is a chapter of Jewish action against the free nations, a crime against the health of the people, who must punish with their heads the responsible traitors." () The purpose of single-sex education was to limit the educational opportunities for girls and women.
Reforms were made to primary school education in 1945, with the goal of bringing students into political alignment with the state and of ensuring social stability. The Elementary Education Act of 1945 was an important change from the last nineteenth century pedagogy previously used in schools. It was created specifically for the purpose of furthering gender roles by indoctrinating children in these roles at a young age. Girls were taught at this age that their role was to become perfect housewives, that one of their most important roles was to always remain faithful to their husbands, and that they should always delegate to and defer to men. Girls were taught that their future careers were to be middle-class housewives. Any other career option would be dishonorable to her family. The Elementary Education Act of 1945 included a set of principles to be implemented in the curriculum that integrated religious, patriotic and nationalism. Article 11 of the 1945 addressed the education of girls, saying "the feminine primary education will prepare especially for domestic household, crafts and industry life." The subjects for girls included in the curriculum for girls: housework, cooking, sewing, gardening, nursing and childcare for the care of children. Primary education was divided into two stages, the first from 6 to 10 years and the second from 10 to 12 years old. Importantly, the new curriculum was sex segregated, with girls being taught their place was home in the home and being given a skill set for that. The Catholic Church was placed in charge of the curriculum in this system, in both private and state run schools. This reform included a requirement that all children had compulsory school attendance from the ages of 6 to 12 and public schools were to receive government subsidies. The Franco government though did not require the state to establish educational facilities in more rural areas as they claimed they lacked funding to do so, which left the Catholic Church and other private organizations in charge of education delivery. Classrooms had pictures of Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Primary schools started the day with hoisting the Spanish flag, and singing nationalist songs like El cara al sol. National holidays included El día de la victoria, el 18 de Julio, La fiesta de la raza and Día de la Hispanidad. In 1956, Spain and the Vatican signed a Concordat. Article 26 of this agreement said, "All the educational centers, of any order and degree, are state or not state, the education will be adjusted to the principles of the dogma and the moral of the Catholic Church." While educational reforms took place in 1970, co-education was not an option as the Catholic Church was opposed to the idea. The Spanish Federation of Religious of the Teaching released a statement which said, "The moral risks are great. The church is not opposed to a coexistence of sex, but to easily replace a legitimate community by a promiscuity of a tendentiously egalitarian nature." Girls were guaranteed by law an education equal to that of boys.