Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Course Objective

To show the student the evolution and transformation of the role of women in Spain from the beginning of the 20th century up to our own time through a literary, historical, political, and social focus.

Course Description

Different perspectives will be taken as regards the role of women in the last 100 years in Spain, showing the spectacular change that they have experienced, especially in the last 25 years with the arrival of democracy.

From the socio-political point of view, the course will attempt to show the recognition of the right of Spanish women to participate in the political life of the society with universal suffrage, as well as all the rights linked to the social state: education, work, health, etc.

We will analyze the changes that have been produced in our society as a result of the incorporation of women into the labor force and the performance of public positions of responsibility.
Finally, some of the problems women still must face in Spanish society, such as violence against women, will be analyzed.

Section 1: The situation of women before Franco and the Civil War: Obtaining suffrage in 1933, the consideration of women as the “angel of the home,” in which her primary function would be her total dedication to the home and the family. The influence of the Catholic Church.

Section 2: The situation of women during the Civil War (1936-1939): Spanish society divided into two factions: The Republican Spain and the ideal of the independent “new woman” and Franco’s Spain with the idea of the submissive woman. Envisioned in the film Libertarias by Vicente Aranda.

Section 3: Women and the dictatorship of Franco: Political participation of women and the female section of the Spanish Falange. The feminist movement of the ‘60s. The figure of Dolores Ibarruri. The Spanish feminine narrative through the novel Nada by Carmen Laforet.

Section 4: Women in the Transition: Demographic transformations, the advances in education, the incorporation of women into the work force, the “women’s revolution.” The Constitution of 1978 and the reforms of the Civil Code that permitted the decriminalization of abortion and the legalization of divorce.

Section 5: The Present-day Woman: The “superwoman,” as envisioned in the film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios by Pedro Almodóvar. Women’s problems in today’s society: gender violence. Te doy mis ojos as envisioned by Iciar Bollaín. Analysis of a real-life case: the marriage of Prince Felipe and Leticia Ortiz.

061110