The international women's congress (1970). The women's section of the falange is reinvented

Abstract

The International Women's Congress is a privileged framework to analyze the tensions that the Women's Section of the Falange experienced during the late Francoism. This event offers itself an ideal context for an in-depth study of the gender discourse articulated by the Women's Section in this time. It soon becomes clear that the contents and the limits of a socially acceptable model of womanhood they promoted shifted radically since the 1940s and 1950s. Besides the changes in their own ideology and sensibilities, the Francoist women activists acknowledged the need to adapt this model to the new experiences of Spanish women, brought about by the socio-cultural and economic transformation that the country underwent in this period. Researching the congress also allows us to study the strategies of opposition and resistance developed by the democratic and left-wing women's organizations, and the benefits and disadvantages of these strategies.