24,304,407 women live in Spain (according to INE data from July 2022), one million more than men. And although the female social weight has never represented this 50% of the population, it has been gaining strength over the decades by fighting and claiming rights. They have gone from being mere performers of men’s household chores and property – they became dependent on the husband from the father and even Franco’s laws protected the right to mistreat the wife in case of infidelity – to gradually position themselves socially as professionals of full rights and as economically independent individuals, although here, too, there is still a long way to go.
Without intending to attempt the impossible task of representing the infinite feminine diversity in the testimony of a few women, we have talked with eight of different ages -from 20 to 84 years old- and origins to try to capture the evolution over the years. . We speak with Pilar, Mercè, Candi, Nuri, Amara, Laura, Judit and Júlia, but they could be the mother, grandmother or sister of anyone reading these lines. Women of different generations, from those born during the Civil War to those who came into the world in the 21st century.
Their trajectories give a good account of the obstacles overcome and the pending tasks, because they have not yet been able to completely shed the old patriarchal mandates. The stories of these women confirm that, beyond the ideological clash between currents of feminism, on the street the debate is more serene.
Each story is unique, not only because of the moment in which each of these women was born, but also because of their social circumstances, the opportunities they have had or the people who have crossed their path. Women who got married and became dependent on a husband who despised them, the difficult challenge of developing a professional career without giving up the family, raising children alone after getting out of abuse, empowerment in professions dominated by men, life dedicated to care; maternity, which has now opened the focus: from women who decide not to be to those who do it alone.
And all this with the desires of the youngest, who reflect an a priori easier scenario than their grandmothers and mothers had – great references for the majority – but who still deal today with the dregs of a society in which sexual violence and its negation are too present.
Pilar Sáez (Millares, Valencia, 1937) says that she has been a “revolutionary” woman. She arrived in Barcelona in the middle of the Civil War and she remembers that when she was young all her social norms relegated her one step behind the rights of her brother, ten years her junior. Although she points out that her father was ahead of her time and she remembers that when she returned from work, “she would go to the fish market to buy something cheap for dinner and then wash the dishes.” Pilar studied commerce and at the age of 19 she went from being an “autonomous” woman who worked and delivered the earnings at home to getting married and being owned by a man who turned her into a “girl for everything.” She took care of the house, the two daughters they had (Esther and Judith) and the store they ran. And all “without charge”. She laments that she “couldn’t even buy me a skirt without permission.”
Her husband never laid a hand on her, but he never treated her kindly. Pilar was “unhappy”. But then, if a woman separated, the children passed into the hands of the paternal family, she says. And this stopped her until she was 48 years old and her daughters were already raised, she separated from her. “I felt free,” she says. She had to start from 0 because most of her friends stopped talking to her. And she fell in love with a man with whom she was able to enjoy life for three years, because he died of cancer.
He worked in public relations in a restaurant and in a corsetry until his retirement. “I’ve done nothing but work.” She now has four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and is comforted that they have the life she longed for.
That of Mercè Piqueras is an example that you can develop a successful professional career without giving up your family. Although it is not easy. She was able to do it with the predisposition of her partner and with outside help.
Women were “very marginalized” at the time Mercè was born (Barcelona, ??1949). They had to take care of the house and the rest was all going “against the current”. She learned housework, a subject that she believes should be taught in schools and she claims that it is not about putting housework on a pedestal “but neither is it despising it.”
Although at home they told each other that the most she could do would be nursing, she wanted to be a doctor. And she did it by paying part of her career working in some laboratories. She has a degree in medicine and surgery, a specialist in gynecology and a Master’s in Senology and breast pathology, she married at the age of 21 and was the mother of David (49 years old) in her second year at the age of 23. She and she gave birth to Marta (44) in the hospital where she was on merit. With her husband Manel, a civil engineer, she knew how to get along. She even acknowledges that he took over 50%. That is why Piqueras, a convinced feminist, believes that she cannot leave men aside.
She also took care of her parents and her husband, who passed away after 12 years with dementia. This final stage was very hard because then she did not resign from work either. “When she got to work, she had been up for hours and had bathed Manel,” she says. She retired at 68 permanently due to “family circumstances.”
She has four granddaughters between the ages of 18 and 13 and she is reassured that they will not have to jump over the barriers that Mercè did find. Although she sees it crucial that they find a partner who “does not stop them.” She believes that many feminine milestones have been achieved that in her youth seemed unattainable. And her motto is “Antimachismo, yes. Anti-men, no. But she also points out that contempt for women should “absolutely never” be tolerated.
Being born in rural Spain in the 50s marked women: doomed to domestic work. This is the Candi Macarro case (Hinojal, 1955). “Then the children worked from the time our teeth came out.” Candi took the cows to graze and food for his father and brothers, who grew corn and cotton on the plot. It was his sister, fifteen years older than him, who taught him to read and write, because she didn’t start school until she was eight years old. She wanted to study, but her hands helped support the family. At the age of 11 the family went to live in Bilbao and at 12 she was already living in a house. “I said I was 14 to get caught,” she says. Her life has nothing to do with that of her eldest grandson (she is six), who is the same age as when she began serving.
At 20, she married a boy who spent the summer in the town and who lived in Barcelona: “the biggest mistake of my life”. She almost without realizing it, because reproductive health has also changed a lot, at the age of 21 she became the mother of twins (Óscar and David). But the family and sexual relationship was almost non-existent due to his alleged never confessed homosexuality. And she went through a depression. They ran a bar that she practically ran, took care of the children and endured the psychological abuse of her husband. “I felt tiny when I had always considered myself a valid woman.”
The therapy prescribed by a sexologist made Candi get pregnant with a single sexual relationship. “I cried a lot,” she says. And she was eight months old and in front of her other two children that she suffered an episode of physical violence. “She hit me all over the place and slammed me against the wall.” Fortunately, Rosa was born without problems. At the age of three, she separated from her. She looked for a couple of houses to clean while the children were at school and went ahead.
Shortly after, Candi met Jacinto in a separate association and after three years they went to live together. And now they share life and children. “I brought my backpack and he brought his.” They worked together in a hair ornaments company, but in 2008, with the crisis, she returned to cleaning houses until her retirement. A partial retirement because she continues to take care of some grandchildren. She also tries to take care of herself and goes to the gym, something that works very well for her fibromyalgia.
She knows that her life would have been different as a man, but she is proud of having raised her children. “My reference has been me. It was my self-love that made me push forward.
Nuri Molist’s life is also dedicated to caring, in his case because his youngest son, Arnau (24 years old), has a significant physical and mental disability. The fourth of seven siblings, Nuri was born in Aiguafreda (Barcelona, ??1965). She was not a good student and in the eighth year of EGB she stood up. She started working while she took on household chores with her sisters and her mother. She married at 25 and at 30 she was the mother of Ariadna. She worked the night shift at a meat company until she got pregnant and she put paid work on hold for three years. Her care is shared with her husband-door installer-although she was the one who had to sacrifice herself at work. For 19 years she has worked in a school canteen, where she has found a lot of understanding. Also her daughter, a teacher by profession, helps with whatever is needed.
Nuri tries to have moments for her. She goes to zumba. And two Saturdays a month a girl from the day center that Arnau attends takes care of him so that with her husband Ramón they can make plans as a couple. For Nuri, her mother is her reference. From her she learned a strength that leads her to define herself as a “fighter and brave… If not, you sink.”
Amara Cabané (Barcelona, ??1974) has made her way into a world of men. She studied an administrative FP because it allowed her to do paid internships, money that went very well at home. And her tenacity has led her to be the head of distribution in Spain for a prestigious Italian furniture company. “I live to work”, admits Amara, who moves between Barcelona and Madrid. Discipline has been a part of her life. She became the Spanish Table Tennis champion and here she began to see that men and women did not have the same treatment. In her work career she has also found machismo and in some work they have recognized that she was facing the public for “being pretty”.
She began to grow professionally after being the mother of Dani (20 years old), a professional soccer player in Madrid and after having Noa (14 years old) she took a sabbatical year.
After going through a reduction in hours and slowing down, she re-engaged in work and today she “succeeds” in a men’s market, although she points out that she has found “respect and admiration.” She got divorced two years ago and now she has a new partner.
His mother has been his great reference. And also all those women who have had to fight with the “banners of male society.”
Historically, motherhood has been almost forced by being a woman. Not today. This is the case of Laura Rayas (Barcelona, ??1985), who, by her own choice, is pregnant alone with Salma, who will be born in June. She has a degree in sailing, she became independent at the age of 20, works as director of operations and affirms that the maritime sector is “very macho” although luckily her company is the exception. She has had to explain in job interviews if she had a partner or if she wanted to have children. “Now she wouldn’t respond,” she says.
A pregnancy with a partner that did not prosper opened her eyes to motherhood and she has gone through several abortions, six “inseminations and two in vitros”. She believes that women have to jump over many more obstacles than men and that motherhood is one of them. So much so, that she confesses that she initially wanted the baby to be a boy because “it’s easier for them.”
“Our generation is the one of empowerment”, assures Laura. She regrets that women cannot go down the street without fear, something that “does not happen to men” and admits that she still gets nervous when she passes by the area where she goes out for a run and in which a stranger touched her ass. Her mother, who despite growing up in a macho environment and not having training opportunities is “very creative”, is one of her great references. Also her father, who always encouraged her to study in order to be financially independent.
He is optimistic and believes that the society that will leave Salma will be “very egalitarian”. He is clear that the solution is at home “with education and conscience”.
Judit Nadal was born in Andorra (1993), grew up in Sort, studied Biotechnology in Barcelona and has lived in Wageningen (Holland) for eight years. She came for an internship in plant biotechnology and now, paired with Anton, she is working on her doctorate. The co-responsible model that she has had at home has helped her to be very clear about how she wants her future to be, although her mother, a biologist by training and a pharmacist by profession, assumes more domestic weight than her father .
Neither in the Netherlands nor in Barcelona has she felt discriminated against, but she acknowledges that the highest positions in her profession are still held by men. And although she claims that “we are 50% of the population”, she laments that “we are still far from being equal”. That is why she believes it is essential to “let yourself be seen” and not settle.
In the Netherlands, even today women adopt the couple’s last name when they marry (if it is a man) but he assures that Anton is clear that in his case this will never be the case. “My last name says who I am and I don’t want to lose it.” And although they already feel the pressure to have children – the vast majority of those around them already think about it – they still want to explore life and their jobs before “getting into a more structured life”
His mother is his great reference and from her he has copied his courage and his drive to always push forward. “I don’t know if we carry it in our blood.”
Júlia Sánchez (Barcelona, ??2002) is the youngest in the report and the one who has traveled the furthest along “especially if I compare myself with my grandmother”. She is a student of ADE in English, she plays the piano, practices beach volleyball and laments the underestimation of women’s sport beyond soccer. She assures that she has suffered “enough” episodes of machismo. “Every day they whistle at me on the street, as if she were an object. And they have touched my ass ”, she laments. Also in high school “colleagues recriminated us for wearing a neckline.”
Fortunately, at the university he has not experienced episodes like this. But the sexualization of the woman’s body bothers him. Even today she finds boys her age who make her ugly when she does topless. And together with her boyfriend, he witnessed an episode that had an impact on him: a boy physically mistreating his partner. All of it evidences the work that she remains to do. And it is that sexist violence and the denial of it by a part of the male population seems to be generating a gap in youth. “I have friends who are more confident at a party than hooking up with a girl because of what she might go through,” she explains.
Maternity does not happen today because it is not even a plan for the future. He wants to do an Erasmus abroad and train as a professional, also abroad.
His mother is his great reference. “She has educated my brother and me in freedom and has given me the confidence to decide who I want to be without caring what others think. He doesn’t let anyone step on him. I hope I look like her.”
