The ideology of femininity in the social protection of rural women in the proto-francoist period

Abstract

The normative evolution in the protection of women in the proto-Francoist period was established with the aim of preserving the race and protecting women for their great mission: that of being mothers. Together with the fact that the Church entered political life to steer women towards Catholic and conservative positions far removed from a worldview of citizenship centred on the world of work, society’s perspective from the 1940s onwards was aimed at maintaining a patriarchal family in which women’s mission was none other than Christian charity, far removed from any right that could be recognised by social protection regulations. Organisations such as the Auxilio Social played a relevant role in social care after the Civil War at the cost of superimposing ideology on the protection of women, through welfare institutions aimed at revolutionising the social aspect by means of the tool of social control that was the National-Syndicalist Movement.