Women of Salamanca. Academia, society and culture

Virginia Ávila García

doi:10.3989/chdj.2019.011

Abstract

This research was carried out during a 2017 sabbatical spent at the University of Salamanca. My objectives were to recover the historical memory of the early figures of the feminist struggle in that university and its context in the years of Spain’s transition to democracy, elucidate the processes through which women sought institutional empowerment over almost four decades, and explain the diverse interests that converged in different ways to understand women’s rights and the integral insertion of women into domains of academic and social life.   The study had two axes: first, to ascertain the convergence-divergence of interests among Salamancan women from the 1960s to 1990s, especially between two groups of militants, one social, the other academic, where the variables of social class and professional formation became apparent; and, second, to reconstruct the paths that women professors took to improve their status and gain recognition for their contributions to science in Spain’s oldest and most conservative university, by creating a Centre for Women’s Studies (Cemusa) at the dawn of the new century. The methodology involved rescuing the voices of women citizens, housewives and long-serving professors who narrated their lives as social fighters. The review of documents, pamphlets, photographs, videos and the collection of Cemusa’s publications facilitated recreating the life of Salamanca, its university and its women.

Highlights

Salamancan women born during Franco’s dictatorship participated in the transition to democracy in contemporary Spain. These were professional women who entered the society of knowledge from the late 1960s onwards in a historical process that opened the way to a worldwide reconfiguration of the neoliberal model of globalization into which they were incorporated
The resulting dis agreements and ruptures impeded establishing collaboration and non-aggression pacts among women. This history of women scholars in Salamanca traces the process of the internal formation of feminist groups and their fractures, before focusing on their institutional recognition and creation of their Centre for Women’s Studies (Centro de Estudios de Mujeres, or Cemusa) at the University, where they sought to enrich the society of knowledge with their contributions
The university professors in the Women’s Assembly, including Antonia Díez Balda, Carmen Castrillo, Rosario Cortés and María José Cantó, defined demands for the women of their class in their studies, but their theoretical discussions distanced them from the concrete problems of housewives, so some –though not Antonia– left social feminism to join the nascent academic feminist movement, which outlined the themes of their militancy and began to prepare them to “occupy their own space” in academia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Salamancan women born during Franco’s dictatorship participated in the transition to democracy in contemporary Spain. The university professors in the Women’s Assembly, including Antonia Díez Balda, Carmen Castrillo, Rosario Cortés and María José Cantó, defined demands for the women of their class in their studies, but their theoretical discussions distanced them from the concrete problems of housewives, so some –though not Antonia– left social feminism to join the nascent academic feminist movement, which outlined the themes of their militancy and. The Seminar’s topics and theoretical discussions were led by Murillo with the support of Mercedes Romero, who held a Master’s degree in Women’ Studies from the Universidad Central de Barcelona (1991), and who gave courses on critical feminist theory to a group of some fifteen women at the university, including the professors Carmen Castrillo, María José Cantó and Rosario Cortés, and several doctoral students (telephone interview with Mercedes Romero, November 2017). All these experiences helped her make informed decisions during her later work as a member of President José Luis Zapatero’s cabinet, where she served as the first Minister of Equality (Secretaria de Igualdad), sponsored the Law of Equality (3/2007), and helped establish equality committees in Spain’s universities that sought to: “Ensure that the University obeyed legislation on the effective equality of women and men, and promoted and enforced equal rights”, as established in Article 177 bis. of the Statutes of the University of Salamanca. According to Murillo, the equality committees constituted an additional administrative burden, one that did not fulfil its functions but did present awards to individuals who stood out in the struggle to achieve equality between women and men in academics at the University

A SPACE OF POWER FOR THE FEMENIST ACADEMIA

CONCLUSIONS