Paper short abstract:

The study compares Latin American Marianismo with the national Catholocism of Franquista Spain, focusing on three themes: fertility control, contribution to the family wage and woman as heart of the home. It concludes by considering women’s role in the 21stcentury

Paper long abstract:

The paper begins by comparing the literature on Latin American marianismo with Spanish National Catholicism of Franquismo, as found in the Basque port of Pasaia between 1939, the end of the Civil War, to the end of desarrollismo in the 1970s. There, the ideal woman was a housewife, a model promoted by the Falange, through its Sección Feminina, which promoted the image and values of the ideal woman. Key elements included marriage, especially regarding reproduction; the wife's work as "contributing the family wage"; and the image of the ethereal woman: the woman, heart of the home, submissive and attentive to her husband. This ideological framework permeated the world of the woman defined as housewife, which was consolidated in Spain through large, extended families. By the 1970s, however, the ideal was the woman in the nuclear family and she was being forced by economic necessity to occupy a public space alongside her traditional private one. It is in this new reality that we find the roots of the changes, conflicts and newly emerging norms that combined to produce a new reality for women in the twenty-first century. Analysing marianismo within this framework will give us a fresh approach to understanding women's emerging roles.