Paper short abstract:

I reflect on the application of the principle of gender equality to festive rituals and about the processes that take place to make it effective: the strategies of women to participate, their performances, how they break the rules, how they change customs, and also the resistances they encounter.

Paper long abstract:

In the past two decades, Spain has witnessed a growing interest in women’s participation in festive-rituals (immaterial cultural heritage), long challenged by feminist groups but only recently taken up by government and local management. In this paper, I reflect on the application of the principle of gender equality to festive rituals and about the processes that take place to make it effective: the strategies of women to participate, their performances, how they break the rules and influence legislation, the political responses, how they change customs, and also the resistances they encounter from traditional groups.

I will argue that the demand of women to take part may be considered a vindication, a clamor for retribution of a historical offence: the exclusion of women from public and symbolic spaces of their community. I will contend the symbolic efficiency of their actions, a transformative power that reclaims reparation both in the symbolic arena and in the social,political and legislative order.

I will also expose some of the strategies that have been used to continue with this claim in pandemic times and the opportunity that opens this time "without parties" to rethink them.