The Presence and Absence of Spanish Socialist Women in the International Trade Unions during the Interwar Period

Abstract

The scarce presence of Spanish socialist women in the international trade union bodies was one of the basic facts of the interwar period; an exception was the impulse for participation on the international scene that the coming of the Second Republic and the Civil War elicited from the women. The paper seeks to analyze the female presence in the most relevant organizations, the International Federation of Trade Unions (Iftu), the International Labor Organization (Ilo), and the Socialist International. To that end we utilize diverse primary sources found in the archives of the Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), the Trade Unions Congress (Warwick University, UK), and the Fundacion Pablo Iglesias (Madrid).