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Retrieving feminine experience
Women's Studies International Forum 31 (2008) 424–433
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Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f
Retrieving feminine experience Women's education in twentieth-century Spain based on three school life histories Teresa Susinos ⁎, Adelina Calvo, Marta García Department of Education, University of Cantabria, Avda. Castros s/n. 39005 Santander, Spain
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s y n o p s i s This article describes the research carried out in Cantabria, Spain, aimed at reconstructing the history of women's education in Spain during the twentieth century, based on the school life histories of three women from the same family. The work is developed in two stages. The first one required drawing up the schooling accounts and placing them in their social and historical context. In the second stage, we carried out a critical and comparative analysis of the accounts based on six intergenerational dilemmas: the creation and development of the graded school, the change in the model of childhood, the feminization of the curriculum, the role of religion in the women's lives, the access to the labour market, and lastly the influence of the teaching staff. We have sought to develop a first person account by means of retrieving the women's own experiences. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction As Women's Studies or Gender Studies have proven, in Spain the History of Education has centred on the topic of women's education comparatively late (Ballarín, 1990; Flecha, 2004; Ballarín, 2001; Ortiz, 2003; Grana, 2004; Ballarín & Ortiz, 1990; VV.AA., 1996). This should come as no surprise to us if we consider that certain changes in methodology and epistemology were necessary at the heart of this subject before women's experience could be taken into account in historical studies. Although this change was slow, it sparked an important historiographical renovation (Birriel, 2005). In addition, in our view it was not until the start of the 1980s when research into the history of education underwent greater development accompanied by an opening up of the themes studied, renewed methodology and strengthened contacts beyond Spain's frontiers (Guereña, Ruiz Berrio & Tiana Ferrer, 1994). Against this background, the several research works that have been aimed at studying and describing the History of Women's Education have some of their references in the
⁎ Corresponding author. 0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2008.09.004
framework of so-called Social History and History of Mentalities, indebted, in turn, to academic traditions such as the French Ecóle des Annales. One of the most important changes to take place at the heart of this subject, and which is precisely reflected in the scientific work of Gender Studies, concerns the concept of the protagonist (as the person who takes decisions that affect a wide social community) and which is recognised at three different, but complementary, moments: the step from an individual protagonist to a collective one; the step from being a European protagonist to a non-European one, and finally the step from being a masculine protagonist to being a masculine and feminine one (Fernández Valencia, 2001). All this has produced a change in terms of the research topics that History can tackle, a redefinition of what is or is not worth researching, the elaboration of new interpretative rules so as to answer questions already asked, a concern for common day aspects, hidden or denied by traditional research, and in short, the introduction of new lines of research (Marshall & Young, 2006; Fonow & Cook, 2005). But these changes do not only affect the “object” of the discipline (which now includes women's experience as part of social research), but also the “method” and the research “context of justification” (Díaz, 2002). In this way, feminist research has
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gone to great lengths to go deeply into reflexivity in research, in other words, into the position occupied by the researchers in relation to the object of research, their values, feelings and interest in relation to the object of research itself (Hertz, 1997). Likewise they have been at pains to analyse how the researchers allow themselves to be represented in the text and how their presence or absence in the same is conveyed. We must not forget that the voices of those researched is practically always filtered through the narration of the author who ultimately decides what is to be told or ignored (Charmaz & Mitchell, 1997). In this way, there has been an overhaul in methodology and research sources in which qualitative methods have widened greatly, and this has achieved a favoured status in feminist research, since they are a privileged means for “giving voice” to women, to emphasize their own experience and to put forward new access routes for historical and social knowledge beyond traditional research methods (Devault, 1999). The recovery of the feminine experience, from the women's point of view, thus finds a privileged source of expression in qualitative methodologies since, as Fine, Weis, Weseen, and Wong (2000) have explained, methodological decisions are central in the research processes if we take into account the fact that, far from being passive strategies, the methodologies used help to reveal, produce or make different identity types possible. For a few years now our research group on “gender and education” has been working towards the recovering of women's voices using the biographical narrative methodology (Parrilla & Susinos, 2005; Parrilla & Susinos, ongoing research; Calvo, García & Susinos, 2006; García, Calvo & Susinos, 2008; Susinos, Calvo & Rojas, 2008; Susinos, 2007; Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). Here, our fundamental interest is to know different aspects of the social reality of women drawn from their own words, which means taking into account the feminine experience as a valuable tool in the knowledge creation process of not only the women themselves, but also about the world in general. As Burns and Walker (2007, p.66) state this new approach “has been at the forefront of challenging the silencing of women's voice in society and research and in challenging a narrow, gendered kind of science (…)”. The voice of the main actors thus becomes the cornerstone of the research. This methodological change that has affected all social sciences (anthropology, psychology, education, etc.) has meant placing at the centre of research processes the biographical and autobiographical narratives as tools and object of study of social concerns. What has made this change possible is the fact that for these sciences, social phenomena start to be understood as “texts”, whose value and meaning originate from the self-interpretation that the subjects build and relate in first person. Furthermore, just as Ricoeur (1986) stated, there is a profound analogy between action and story, in such a way that through the narrations of the protagonists we can capture the diachronic dimension of the events and the configuration of the social relationships in their historic development (Bertaux, 2005). Therefore, as opposed to the description of a world that is given and can be demonstrated, the so-called biographical narrative approach holds the narration as something that “comprises a chain of statements,
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which supposes that the human world is constructed as a whole in the same course of actions or events” (Bolívar, Domingo & Fernández, 2001, p. 20). This means that the way in which individuals tell their story (what they underline, and omit, their position as protagonists or victims, etc.) shapes what they can declare about their own lives. In fact, we can affirm that the important moments of a life are not provoked by real facts, but more by the changes made in the story that one has been constructing to tell about life and the self (Bruner & Weiser, 1995). On the other hand, the application of the biographical narrative perspective in Gender Studies is producing research work of great interest on very different topics (Birbaumer, Lebano, Ponzellini, Tolar, & Wagner, 2007; Chase, 1995; Parrilla & Susinos, 2005; Bjerrum & Rudberg, 2000; Britton & Baxter, 1999) which contribute to promoting an innovative form of making History which displaces from its central position the historic discourse of the so-called “male archetype” (a married, middle-class, white male). All this contributes to taking the dominant patriarchal relationships so established in our societies to a crisis point (Dickinson, 2005). Aim and stages of the study The objective of this study is to chronicle the women's education in Spain in the twentieth-century based on the storied accounts of lived schooling experiences of three women in the same family. Each of these narratives represents a story told in the first person of what the women's passage through formal education was like. This way, and as we will have the chance to see, their accounts help us to understand the metamorphosis, constants and breakaways, that have occurred in the history of women's education in Spain in the last century. This will provide us with some interesting ideas to analyse, broaden, debate or rethink the most general accounts that the History of Education, as an academic subject, is elaborating on this very theme. The study carried out has been divided into two stages. The first required, initially, the elaboration of the school life histories of the three women participating in the study and later their position related to the social events that framed their biographies, as well as the most significant educational changes and developments that have been documented by the History of Education (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008). The second stage required a critical and comparative analysis of the three narrations based on six dilemmas or key issues that arise from the protagonists' discourses (about their worries, expectations, fears, doubts…). These dilemmas or ideas under debate were: the progressive implementation of a model of a graded school, the passage from a short childhood model to a long one, feminine education, the importance of religion in women's lives, the accession of women to the labour market, and the influence of teachers, particularly schoolmistresses (Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). A summary of the stages and objectives of the research is illustrated in the figure below (Fig. 1). Stage 1. The school life histories in their socio-historical context As we have pointed out, in this first stage we were to pursue a first objective of “giving voice” to the protagonists of
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Fig. 1. Stages and objectives of the research.
the accounts and to assume a new approximation to the study of the History of Education that would be based on the words of the women themselves, of what they consider to be relevant in their schooling, retrieving and giving value to their experience (to what personally affected them, to anecdotes, to emotions, and so on which accompanied the said stage of their lives). The process we have followed in order to make the experience of these three women visible starts from a long autobiographical interview in which each of the protagonists had the opportunity to look back on important aspects of their schooling (subjects, curricular materials, school methodologies, classroom organisation, relevant educational figures, and so on) in each of the educational stages or institutions they had known. From this information we drew up three school life histories that were set down in first person with the aim to make it easier to understand the narration and to make it boost the idea of the protagonists speaking directly to the reader, rather than through intermediaries.1 Both the transcripts and the final written account of school life were approved of with the protagonists. Thus, we have drawn up three school life histories based on the narration of a woman born in 1913 (Piedad2, 1st generation); that of her daughter, born in 1939 (Luisa, 2nd generation) and that of her grand-daughter born in 1971 (Sofía, 3rd generation). We have set off on a journey from the life of a woman from a rural background, to one who studied Primary School Teaching in a religious institution, to end with a young woman from an urban environment who has gained
a degree (in engineering to be precise).3 Their experiences do not only represent the changes that have occurred in education in the last century, but also the important social changes that have taken place in Spain during this period. Along with the process of integration into the education system, the lives of these three women has provided us with much knowledge about the passage from the rural world to the urban, about changes in mentality, the value of education, the process of secularisation Spanish society has undergone or the social improvements campaigned for by feminist movements. To sum up the above, the following figure compiles the periods of schooling of the three protagonists (Fig. 2). Once we had drawn up the school life histories we analysed the narrations of these women within the context of the three historic moments in which their biographies were produced and within the framework of the pedagogical programmes dominant at the time they were receiving their schooling. In this way, their accounts have been accompanied by other data offered from different sources (historical, sociological, and pedagogical) that we have used to bring to light the long process that women lived before they reached school on a large scale, with the object of providing a context for each of the cases and to make them easier to understand. The journey proposed implies starting from personal facts in order to characterise the historic moment as a whole. This way we have concluded that each of these women represents a moment of the history of Spain and the evolution of education in our country that have been analysed in detail
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Fig. 2. Schooling years of Piedad, Luisa and Sofía.
in our work (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). Overall, we have found that the three life histories biographically reproduce a great number of the elements that have been identified as being key in the History of Education in our country, insomuch that they represent “paradigmatic cases” for the said study, although, in the said analysis, we have also found “negative cases” that have allowed us to put forward new hypotheses. Seeing as it would be impossible here to compile the three accounts in their complete historic context, in the following figure (Fig. 3) we present in very brief diagrammatic form the social context in which the three developed their lives. We can also see some of the common factors and breakaway factors between the three, with their being more frequent similarities in the schooling of the second and third generation women and in the social world of the 1st and 2nd generations, with the breakaway most notable in the 3rd generation. In this sense, we have been interested in discovering and illustrating how the 2nd generation acts as a hinge between an educational model considered as
belonging to the Old Regime and an education model much more recognisable nowadays. Stage 2. Analysis and discussion of the schooling accounts The second stage of this research set out to perform a critical and comparative analysis of the three accounts obtained in the first stage, once the narrations had the form of the school life history in first person, and we had carried out the contextualised analysis of the same. This way, and after a careful rereading of each of these narratives, we identified certain landmarks in the school life history of each of these women which we have termed dilemmas (ideasstrength) with the aim to draw attention to them in order to question them, or if you prefer to debate on them in more detail and reconsider them with a certain renewed look, based on the words of the protagonists. Knowing that the dilemmas we finally selected are the result of a process in which the discourses of the protagonists are combined with those of the researchers and that the said
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Fig. 3. Historical–cultural context of the three schooling accounts.
process gives necessary priority to certain issues and ignores others, we have been guided in this thematic selection by various criteria. Firstly, as we have mentioned, the dilemmas arise from the very discourses of the protagonists as elements to which they award certain relevance in their own school history. Furthermore, the dilemmas are selected on the basis of their importance, their pertinence, and are of a transgenerational nature. In this sense, important arguments are those that the women themselves have identified as being relevant throughout their narration, aspects or concerns that appear in a reiterated way, time and again in their discourses and that appear to form the backbone of their schooling memories. Pertinent matters are those that adjust to the final objective of this work which is ultimately to know more and better understand how the different school models have contributed to the configuration of the different feminine identities. The dilemmas chosen are expressly transgenerational, since they have been present in one form or another in the three life histories. That said, the formal presentation of each dilemma has always been undertaken by one of our protagonists, who in each case appears in the text as the spokesperson and as central organiser of the debate. We were interested with this resource to show how this problem is approached and resolved in each of the three generations, the further aim being to know the dilemma in its evolutional dimension. Therefore, each theme dealt with put forward tendencies of evolution and change in the education system and also in society (which is inevitable if we consider that the school is no more than another social institution). This way, once we have situated and placed the
three generations in dialogue with each other in terms of each of the problems considered, we have attempted to widen our scopes towards the way in which such dilemmas are being developed in current society, how they were affecting other contemporary women, and what significance the said problems have acquired in the development of women's education in modern Spain. The dilemmas analysed in the second stage of the research are summarised in this figure (Fig. 4) and are explained briefly below4. Dilemma 1: “In class we were all together, boys and girls, big and small” (Piedad, 1st generation). The schooling accounts of Piedad, Luisa and Sofia have allowed us to be spectators of how the national education has been shaped to the way we know it today. This was a system that from its outset, at the start of the 20th century, was unstructured, precarious in terms of material resources and personnel and barely efficient in its mission to teach elementary literacy. In fact, the conditions in which Piedad underwent her passage through formal education send us back to the “unitary” rural school,5 with scarce resources and what was the predominant school model in its day, seeing that in 1923, 92% of schools were “unitary” (Viñao, 2004, p. 25). This situation was to last for a long period of time, since, despite the existence of the relevant legislation (the first in 1898), the graded school model was introduced into our
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Fig. 4. Dilemmas under debate in Stage 2 of the research.
country very slowly. This slowness of the expansion process of the graded school is affirmed when we compare basic schooling in the school accounts of Piedad and her daughter Luisa. Even though more than 25 years had passed between the two narrations, it is as if time had stood still in the school both had inhabited. Despite all this, Luisa had already experienced a type of schooling with a much more complete organisation in grades and levels that had taken place in different institutions. From a unitary rural school she progressed to take the “bachillerato” (secondary education, at that time) and from there to Primary School Teaching in a religious boarding school. Naturally, Sofía's schooling was carried out according to a rigidly graded system, structured in years, cycles and levels very similar to the current one (although with different terminology), and from which we can consider that her account reveals the full maturity of the graded model of schooling. The study of these three school life histories has allowed us to confirm that the progressive adoption of a graded school model brought with it changes that affected all aspects of the curriculum such as school subjects that were regulated in the different study programmes, the systems of evaluation and promotion of the students or school materials, and that these changes produced in a parallel way the regulating of the teaching profession and a successive specialisation of teaching staff.
than in the two other cases. Even more so the Piedad's schooling was intermittently interrupted by having to carry out certain tasks to help the family economy or housekeeping, hence the expression “short childhood” referring to the period of childhood prevalent at that time (Escolano, 2000), a model experienced by both Piedad and Luisa. As we know, for centuries children shared with adults work and play activities and it has only been in recent times when childhood has been considered as a period of “nature” different from adulthood, which has been influenced by the contributions of certain sciences such as biology, psychology, and pedagogy, as well as the changes in lifestyle and the production systems of western societies that have very markedly changed child rearing habits. Particularly, our protagonists show us how the progressive extension of schooling is the cause and consequence of this model of long childhood that has been established itself in our country throughout the twentieth century (Gimeno, 2003). All this allows us to pinpoint why in Sofia's account we have not found any hint of the work described by her mother and grandmother and which were an important contribution to the family economy, and yet we find a long period of schooling (20 years), since the childhood period has progressively acquired characteristics of its own, occupying areas that are different and separated from those of adults (chiefly school time) and have been becoming longer in terms of time, as is the situation we know today.
Dilemma 2:
Dilemma 3:
“I didn't go to school very much (…). I practically always had to help at home and work on the farm” (Piedad, 1st generation).
“At school, we girls did sewing and embroidery (…) while the boys drew” (Luisa, 2nd generation).
Thanks to the analysis of this second dilemma, we have been able to affirm that the schooling of these three generations is affected by the model of childhood predominant at the time. This led, as in Piedad's case to the period of compulsory schooling being much shorter (barely five years)
The narratives of the three protagonists have illustrated rather clearly what since historical and sociological studies have been termed stages or phases through which the women's education has passed (Calvo, 2005; Subirats i Martori, 2006; Fernández Enguita, 1999; Hey, 1996; Skelton, 1997) and that in Spanish context have been summarised in
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three: the exclusion from the formal educational system or schooling of women in a very precarious way (in Piedad's case); the segregated schooling in terms of gender (Luisa); and the large scale integration of women in the education system (Sofía). Nevertheless, the debate continues as to whether this introduction has actually meant a change in the dominant male symbolic (coeducation) or more a case of women's enforced adaptation to the men's world that already existed (mixed schooling). In the case of Piedad and Luisa there is a certain degree of feminization of the curriculum in compulsory education that has been softened to a large extent by their attending a mixed school, although it was not considered by the laws in force nor were the most common practises in Spain at that time in which schools separated according to sex were most dominant. Feminization appears for both in their post compulsory education studies and it is experienced by Luisa to a much stronger extent during her “bachillerato” and Primary School Teaching students in the Convent School. The feminine curriculum is presented at this moment through curricular cultures and practises such as school materials, academic subjects and the feminization of the teaching staff. Finally, Sofía receives her schooling in a mixed regime typical of modern democratic systems which has allowed her greater freedom in her academic and professional choices. This has enabled her to study a degree still very strongly masculinised in Spain (Alberdi, Escario & Matas, 2000; Sebastián, Málik & Sánchez, 2001; Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008), that of engineering. Dilemma 4: “I think that (…) going to a religious school (…) has made a necessary mark on me.” (Luisa, 2nd generation). This fourth problem which, like the previous one, is very strongly present in the second protagonist's account, has allowed us to look into what has been the role of the catholic religion in the life and schooling of the women. Analysing questions such as the presence of religion in classroom readings, academic disciplines, the festivities, and school rituals, we have been able to state a progressive withdrawal of the influence of religion in education and in society in general, a question that, as sociological studies have pointed out, is related with the level of the political and economic development of the country. This is what is known as the secularisation thesis (Requena, 2006). In this way, Piedad's account carries us back to a society at the start of the 20th century where religion is present in the daily life of the whole community and where the educational work of the catholic church was not only visible in the control over school establishments, but also in the control exercised both in public and political life, as well as in people's private lives (De Puelles, 1991; Escolano, 2002). On this point, there would have been little difference between the types of society in which Piedad and Luisa lived, since Franco's dictatorship increased the power and influence of Catholicism in political and social spheres, returning religion to the status it had enjoyed in other periods. Therefore, Luisa's school life history reflects this influence in areas such as religious and political indoctrination that took
place via educational subjects (as religion, “forming of the national spirit,” and physical education), or by means of the role of religious organisations had in women's education. Finally the case of Sofia reflects a social and educational reality where the weight of religion gradually gives way as the democratic system and industrialization take root in the country. This way, although the catholic religion has certain presence in Spanish schools (through the celebration of religious festivities and through school subjects such as “Catholic Religion”), the Spanish State recognised itself as being undenominational in 1978 and, as our protagonist has made clear in her account, it is not the religious ideas that in these moments appear to dictate the norms of behaviour or ways of being a woman that are present in Spanish society. Dilemma 5: “For those of us who have studied, work is an important and fundamental part of our lives” (Sofía, 3rd generation). The relationship between women's education and their progressive access to the labour market is perfectly manifest in our three life histories. Thus, starting from the accounts of our protagonists we can establish a sequence of three moments that reflect the progressive approximation of women to the paid labour market (Lagrave, 1992; García Lastra, 2005). Firstly, the story of Piedad shows the lack of possibilities for gaining access to the working world beyond household and agricultural tasks so characteristic of the rural world at that time. Her daughter, however, thanks to furthering her studies beyond compulsory education, has the possibility to create a niche for herself in the professional world with those jobs which during the Franco dictatorship were deemed as being an extension of the caring tasks traditionally attributed to women (in particular, the role of primary school teacher). Finally, the story of Sofia (3rd generation) allows us to biographically identify a third moment of history in which women have been able to access work traditionally conceived as being for men. Without a doubt the situation of Piedad must be read in its historic context given that at the start of the twentiethcentury women represented only 18% of the total of salaried workers in Spain, starting their working lives between nine and fourteen years old, and ending, normally, the moment they were married (Cabrera, 2005, p. 83). Although Luisa may have lived in a rural environment very similar to that of Piedad, the importance that her family gives to education and her success in her studies makes it possible for her to become a schoolteacher, a work opportunity that allows her to form part of the labour market from the standpoint of a job well considered by Franco supporters (Flecha, 1997), bearing in mind the express prohibition of the time for women to accede to certain jobs, and especially married women.6 Finally, Sofia underlines in her account the freedom with which she chose her studies and her job and places at the centre of her life the professional career she has developed. As occurred with previous generations, her situation well represents the world in which she lives in which the presence of women in the labour market has become the norm (currently, women represent 43% of the Spanish working
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population — Institute of Women (Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008). In the same way, her biographical account contains some problems that Spanish women are experiencing in terms of their insertion in the labour market (differences in salaries, greater rates of unemployment and part-time work). In some authors' opinions, this could be partly down to the fact that this incorporation happened intensively in the space of only two decades, reaching in this brief period of time levels of the most developed European countries (García Lastra, 2005). Dilemma 6: “I had teachers who conditioned me to a very great extent/ had a great influence on me” (Sofia, 3rd generation). Lastly, and basing our thoughts on Sofia's account of her schooling, we have been able to consider the importance certain teachers played in the development of our protagonists and their later professional choices. With this dilemma we ask ourselves a number of questions about the teaching profession, the systems of access and the regulation of the profession, as well as particular experiences that the pedagogical relationship provided these women. This way, the memories that Piedad has about her teachers helps us to recognise a model of the pedagogical relationship based on the idea of respect which characterised at that time all relationships with adults in general. Her words appear to reflect to perfection this teaching model in which the teacher was granted an important moral and intellectual authority and was awarded a social role in the civic education of the pupils that will start to disappear later. Similarly, thanks to her account we can also follow the trail of how the teaching profession is constructed. In Luisa's case, the influence of the schoolmistresses is fundamental during her studies of “bachillerato” (secondary education) and Primary School Teaching studies, both in terms of the description that she offers us about the pedagogical relationship she establishes with some nunteachers, and the hostile atmosphere that existed for her in the boarding school, which led her to seek shelter in her studies. Furthermore, through Luisa's account we have also studied the instrumentalisation that Franco's regime had on the teaching profession, particular in the case of schoolmistresses (Gallego, 1983; Rabazas & Ramos, 2006). Finally, Sofia tells in the same way how important the teacher figure was in her professional and academic decisionmaking. This is why at a particular moment of her education, she opts to study technically-oriented studies. Here, Sofia also represents an even smaller percentage of women, no more than 30% (Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008), who decide to enroll on “traditionally” male degree courses, seeing that as we know, the choice of one type of studies or another is not made freely but continues to be conditioned by the roles society assigns to men and women (Agirre, 2001). Final thoughts The way in which we have tackled this research, and which has led us to face two discursive approaches (the narratives of the women and the meta-relates that come from
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different academic fields), allows us to trace certain constants between generations, some breakaways or breaches in the school history, some contradictions that the History of education should continue to look into, and finally, certain metamorphosis of the social and educational models that were in operation in the different time periods analysed. Therefore, we can appreciate that the constants that exist between the social and educational models experienced by different generations are much more numerous and clear between the 1st and 2nd generations and these are shown for example, when analysing the model of childhood that both lived or the prevalence of a morality strongly influenced by the religion that dominated society and schools in their period of childhood. Secondly, these accounts show us breakaways such as the one we have seen between the 1st and 2nd generations and the 3rd in terms of the influence of religion on society and school, much less present in the case of Sofia; or the departure represented by Sofia's acceding to an engineering course when compared to the educational and working opportunities of the previous two generations. Thirdly, we come across various interesting contradictions that need to be researched further. For example, it is worth noting how, in the case of Piedad and Luisa, their first schooling in a unitary school forced them to receive an education contrary to that imposed by the ideology and law at the time (separation of the sexes), which no doubt led them to lead a school life different from that experienced by other women in urban environments. Likewise, there is also a contradiction in how, despite the fact that the (feminine) teaching body was one of the principal instruments at the service of Franco's regime, this said profession is held to be an area of freedom where women could have access to culture and thus had the possibility to build a certain degree of resistance to the totalitarian regime in which they lived. Finally, an example of metamorphosis for us would be to understand how, although economic and material conditions were not provided for this, the model of feminine education (and therefore sexual segregation of the curriculum) tried to create a niche for itself in the poorest schools in our country (in the rural schools) by means of some reading books specifically aimed at girls; and how, also, this took on a different character depending on the sex of the teacher (seeing that, for example, only women were authorised to teach embroidery and sewing). It has not been our intention here to exhaust the debate on the History of Education of women in this century, but more draw up new perspectives that might open up new problems based on this theme. Therefore, apart from the six discussion points we have explored in this research, there is a set of problems or dilemmas that remain open, such as for example, what were the resources that schools were setting in motion in order to occupy the pupils who could not keep up the required pace, what was the world of classmates like, and what was the relationship of the younger generations with women's movements and feminist conquests, and so forth. These questions have only been pencilled in here and we hope to be able to pick them up in later work. Our aim, in whatever case, has not only been to go over the past (which is essential in itself), but delving into the past also helps ourselves to consider how we wish to live and build the present and the future.
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Endnotes 1 The resource of using the first person in writing up life histories has been used and defended by several authors (Denzin, 1994; Tierney, 2000; Subirats, 2006). 2 In an attempt to preserve confidentiality, fictitious names have been used in this study. 3 It is not possible to summarise in the short space of this article the life stories of the three protagonists without oversimplifying their narration. We therefore invite those readers interested to see further Calvo, García and Susinos (2008). 4 Given the space available, we give here a necessary simplification of the multiple and contradictory debates that have been put forward in the research. We ask the reader to see our work (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). 5 Most children in rural schools were grouped together regardless of age or sex. This institution is called “Escuelas unitarias” (unitary schools), as opposed to graded schools. 6 Among others, the Royal Decree of 1938, the Order of 26 March 1946, or the Law of 13 July 1940 on Public Employment set down the conditions which women had to fulfil in order to take different state employment entrance exams. This body of legislation was not to be modified until 1961 by the “Law of Political, Professional and Working Rights of Women.”
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Qualitative research, representations and social responsibilities. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 107−131). London: Sage Pub. Flecha, Consuelo (1997). La vida de las maestras en España. Historia de la educación. Revista interuniversitaria, 16, 199−222. Flecha, Consuelo (2004). Las mujeres en la historia de la educación. XXI. Revista de Educación, 6, 21−34. Fonow, M. Margaret, & Cook, Judith A. (2005). Feminist methodology: New applications in the academy and public policy. Signs: Journal of Women Culture and Society, 30(4), 2211−2236. Gallego, Ma Teresa (1983). Mujer, falange y franquismo. Madrid: Taurus. García Lastra, Marta (2005). Género y trabajo. In Juan Carlos Prior y Rafael Martínez (Coords.), El trabajo en el Siglo XXI (pp.35–52). Granada: Comares. García, Marta, Calvo, Adelina, & Susinos, Teresa (Eds.). (2008). Las mujeres cambian la educación. Investigar la escuela, relatar la experiencia Madrid: Narcea. Gimeno, José (2003). El alumno como intervención. Madrid: Morata. Grana, Isabel (2004). La historia de la educación de las mujeres en España: Líneas actuales de investigación. Revista de Educación, 334, 131−141. Guereña, José Luis, Ruiz Berrio, Julio, & Tiana Ferrer, Alejando (1994). Introducción. In José Luis Guereña, Julio Ruiz Berrio, & Alejandro Tiana Ferrer (Eds.), Historia de la educación en la España contemporánea. Diez años de investigación (pp. 9−21). Madrid: CIDE. Hertz, Rosanna (1997). Introduction: reflexivity and voice. In Rosanna Hertz (Ed.), Refexivity and voice (pp. vii−xviii). London: Sage Pub. Hey, Valerie (1996). Girls and schooling. In Berly Madoc-Jones & Jennifer Coates (Eds.), An introduction to women's studies (pp. 62−83). Blackwell: Oxford — Massachusetts. Instituto de la Mujer-INE (2008). Mujeres y hombres en España 2007. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer-INE. http://www.mtas.es/mujer/mujeres/estud_inves/ mujeres_hombres_%2007.pdf Lagrave, Rose-Marie (1992). A supervised emancipation. In Georges Duby & Michelle Pierrot (Eds.), A History of women in the West, Vol. V (pp. 453-490) Harvard: Harvard University Press. Marshall, Catherine, & Young, Michelle D. (2006). Gender and methodology. In Christine Skelton, Becky Francis, & Lisa Smulyan (Eds.), Gender and education (pp. 63−78). London: Sage. Ortiz, Teresa (2003). Consolidación y visibilidad de los estudios de las mujeres en España: Logros y retos. In VVAA (Ed.), Seminario “Balance y perspectivas de los estudios de las mujeres y del género” (pp. 7−22). Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Parrilla, Ángeles & Susinos, Teresa (Dirs.) (2005). La construcción del proceso de exclusión sociales mujeres jóvenes: origen, formas, consecuencias e implicaciones formativas. Informe de Investigación. http://www.mtas.es/ mujer/mujeres/estud_inves/666.pdf Parrilla, A. & Susinos, T. (Dirs.) (ongoing research). 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Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f
Retrieving feminine experience Women's education in twentieth-century Spain based on three school life histories Teresa Susinos ⁎, Adelina Calvo, Marta García Department of Education, University of Cantabria, Avda. Castros s/n. 39005 Santander, Spain
a r t i c l e
i n f o
s y n o p s i s This article describes the research carried out in Cantabria, Spain, aimed at reconstructing the history of women's education in Spain during the twentieth century, based on the school life histories of three women from the same family. The work is developed in two stages. The first one required drawing up the schooling accounts and placing them in their social and historical context. In the second stage, we carried out a critical and comparative analysis of the accounts based on six intergenerational dilemmas: the creation and development of the graded school, the change in the model of childhood, the feminization of the curriculum, the role of religion in the women's lives, the access to the labour market, and lastly the influence of the teaching staff. We have sought to develop a first person account by means of retrieving the women's own experiences. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction As Women's Studies or Gender Studies have proven, in Spain the History of Education has centred on the topic of women's education comparatively late (Ballarín, 1990; Flecha, 2004; Ballarín, 2001; Ortiz, 2003; Grana, 2004; Ballarín & Ortiz, 1990; VV.AA., 1996). This should come as no surprise to us if we consider that certain changes in methodology and epistemology were necessary at the heart of this subject before women's experience could be taken into account in historical studies. Although this change was slow, it sparked an important historiographical renovation (Birriel, 2005). In addition, in our view it was not until the start of the 1980s when research into the history of education underwent greater development accompanied by an opening up of the themes studied, renewed methodology and strengthened contacts beyond Spain's frontiers (Guereña, Ruiz Berrio & Tiana Ferrer, 1994). Against this background, the several research works that have been aimed at studying and describing the History of Women's Education have some of their references in the
⁎ Corresponding author. 0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2008.09.004
framework of so-called Social History and History of Mentalities, indebted, in turn, to academic traditions such as the French Ecóle des Annales. One of the most important changes to take place at the heart of this subject, and which is precisely reflected in the scientific work of Gender Studies, concerns the concept of the protagonist (as the person who takes decisions that affect a wide social community) and which is recognised at three different, but complementary, moments: the step from an individual protagonist to a collective one; the step from being a European protagonist to a non-European one, and finally the step from being a masculine protagonist to being a masculine and feminine one (Fernández Valencia, 2001). All this has produced a change in terms of the research topics that History can tackle, a redefinition of what is or is not worth researching, the elaboration of new interpretative rules so as to answer questions already asked, a concern for common day aspects, hidden or denied by traditional research, and in short, the introduction of new lines of research (Marshall & Young, 2006; Fonow & Cook, 2005). But these changes do not only affect the “object” of the discipline (which now includes women's experience as part of social research), but also the “method” and the research “context of justification” (Díaz, 2002). In this way, feminist research has
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gone to great lengths to go deeply into reflexivity in research, in other words, into the position occupied by the researchers in relation to the object of research, their values, feelings and interest in relation to the object of research itself (Hertz, 1997). Likewise they have been at pains to analyse how the researchers allow themselves to be represented in the text and how their presence or absence in the same is conveyed. We must not forget that the voices of those researched is practically always filtered through the narration of the author who ultimately decides what is to be told or ignored (Charmaz & Mitchell, 1997). In this way, there has been an overhaul in methodology and research sources in which qualitative methods have widened greatly, and this has achieved a favoured status in feminist research, since they are a privileged means for “giving voice” to women, to emphasize their own experience and to put forward new access routes for historical and social knowledge beyond traditional research methods (Devault, 1999). The recovery of the feminine experience, from the women's point of view, thus finds a privileged source of expression in qualitative methodologies since, as Fine, Weis, Weseen, and Wong (2000) have explained, methodological decisions are central in the research processes if we take into account the fact that, far from being passive strategies, the methodologies used help to reveal, produce or make different identity types possible. For a few years now our research group on “gender and education” has been working towards the recovering of women's voices using the biographical narrative methodology (Parrilla & Susinos, 2005; Parrilla & Susinos, ongoing research; Calvo, García & Susinos, 2006; García, Calvo & Susinos, 2008; Susinos, Calvo & Rojas, 2008; Susinos, 2007; Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). Here, our fundamental interest is to know different aspects of the social reality of women drawn from their own words, which means taking into account the feminine experience as a valuable tool in the knowledge creation process of not only the women themselves, but also about the world in general. As Burns and Walker (2007, p.66) state this new approach “has been at the forefront of challenging the silencing of women's voice in society and research and in challenging a narrow, gendered kind of science (…)”. The voice of the main actors thus becomes the cornerstone of the research. This methodological change that has affected all social sciences (anthropology, psychology, education, etc.) has meant placing at the centre of research processes the biographical and autobiographical narratives as tools and object of study of social concerns. What has made this change possible is the fact that for these sciences, social phenomena start to be understood as “texts”, whose value and meaning originate from the self-interpretation that the subjects build and relate in first person. Furthermore, just as Ricoeur (1986) stated, there is a profound analogy between action and story, in such a way that through the narrations of the protagonists we can capture the diachronic dimension of the events and the configuration of the social relationships in their historic development (Bertaux, 2005). Therefore, as opposed to the description of a world that is given and can be demonstrated, the so-called biographical narrative approach holds the narration as something that “comprises a chain of statements,
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which supposes that the human world is constructed as a whole in the same course of actions or events” (Bolívar, Domingo & Fernández, 2001, p. 20). This means that the way in which individuals tell their story (what they underline, and omit, their position as protagonists or victims, etc.) shapes what they can declare about their own lives. In fact, we can affirm that the important moments of a life are not provoked by real facts, but more by the changes made in the story that one has been constructing to tell about life and the self (Bruner & Weiser, 1995). On the other hand, the application of the biographical narrative perspective in Gender Studies is producing research work of great interest on very different topics (Birbaumer, Lebano, Ponzellini, Tolar, & Wagner, 2007; Chase, 1995; Parrilla & Susinos, 2005; Bjerrum & Rudberg, 2000; Britton & Baxter, 1999) which contribute to promoting an innovative form of making History which displaces from its central position the historic discourse of the so-called “male archetype” (a married, middle-class, white male). All this contributes to taking the dominant patriarchal relationships so established in our societies to a crisis point (Dickinson, 2005). Aim and stages of the study The objective of this study is to chronicle the women's education in Spain in the twentieth-century based on the storied accounts of lived schooling experiences of three women in the same family. Each of these narratives represents a story told in the first person of what the women's passage through formal education was like. This way, and as we will have the chance to see, their accounts help us to understand the metamorphosis, constants and breakaways, that have occurred in the history of women's education in Spain in the last century. This will provide us with some interesting ideas to analyse, broaden, debate or rethink the most general accounts that the History of Education, as an academic subject, is elaborating on this very theme. The study carried out has been divided into two stages. The first required, initially, the elaboration of the school life histories of the three women participating in the study and later their position related to the social events that framed their biographies, as well as the most significant educational changes and developments that have been documented by the History of Education (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008). The second stage required a critical and comparative analysis of the three narrations based on six dilemmas or key issues that arise from the protagonists' discourses (about their worries, expectations, fears, doubts…). These dilemmas or ideas under debate were: the progressive implementation of a model of a graded school, the passage from a short childhood model to a long one, feminine education, the importance of religion in women's lives, the accession of women to the labour market, and the influence of teachers, particularly schoolmistresses (Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). A summary of the stages and objectives of the research is illustrated in the figure below (Fig. 1). Stage 1. The school life histories in their socio-historical context As we have pointed out, in this first stage we were to pursue a first objective of “giving voice” to the protagonists of
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Fig. 1. Stages and objectives of the research.
the accounts and to assume a new approximation to the study of the History of Education that would be based on the words of the women themselves, of what they consider to be relevant in their schooling, retrieving and giving value to their experience (to what personally affected them, to anecdotes, to emotions, and so on which accompanied the said stage of their lives). The process we have followed in order to make the experience of these three women visible starts from a long autobiographical interview in which each of the protagonists had the opportunity to look back on important aspects of their schooling (subjects, curricular materials, school methodologies, classroom organisation, relevant educational figures, and so on) in each of the educational stages or institutions they had known. From this information we drew up three school life histories that were set down in first person with the aim to make it easier to understand the narration and to make it boost the idea of the protagonists speaking directly to the reader, rather than through intermediaries.1 Both the transcripts and the final written account of school life were approved of with the protagonists. Thus, we have drawn up three school life histories based on the narration of a woman born in 1913 (Piedad2, 1st generation); that of her daughter, born in 1939 (Luisa, 2nd generation) and that of her grand-daughter born in 1971 (Sofía, 3rd generation). We have set off on a journey from the life of a woman from a rural background, to one who studied Primary School Teaching in a religious institution, to end with a young woman from an urban environment who has gained
a degree (in engineering to be precise).3 Their experiences do not only represent the changes that have occurred in education in the last century, but also the important social changes that have taken place in Spain during this period. Along with the process of integration into the education system, the lives of these three women has provided us with much knowledge about the passage from the rural world to the urban, about changes in mentality, the value of education, the process of secularisation Spanish society has undergone or the social improvements campaigned for by feminist movements. To sum up the above, the following figure compiles the periods of schooling of the three protagonists (Fig. 2). Once we had drawn up the school life histories we analysed the narrations of these women within the context of the three historic moments in which their biographies were produced and within the framework of the pedagogical programmes dominant at the time they were receiving their schooling. In this way, their accounts have been accompanied by other data offered from different sources (historical, sociological, and pedagogical) that we have used to bring to light the long process that women lived before they reached school on a large scale, with the object of providing a context for each of the cases and to make them easier to understand. The journey proposed implies starting from personal facts in order to characterise the historic moment as a whole. This way we have concluded that each of these women represents a moment of the history of Spain and the evolution of education in our country that have been analysed in detail
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Fig. 2. Schooling years of Piedad, Luisa and Sofía.
in our work (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). Overall, we have found that the three life histories biographically reproduce a great number of the elements that have been identified as being key in the History of Education in our country, insomuch that they represent “paradigmatic cases” for the said study, although, in the said analysis, we have also found “negative cases” that have allowed us to put forward new hypotheses. Seeing as it would be impossible here to compile the three accounts in their complete historic context, in the following figure (Fig. 3) we present in very brief diagrammatic form the social context in which the three developed their lives. We can also see some of the common factors and breakaway factors between the three, with their being more frequent similarities in the schooling of the second and third generation women and in the social world of the 1st and 2nd generations, with the breakaway most notable in the 3rd generation. In this sense, we have been interested in discovering and illustrating how the 2nd generation acts as a hinge between an educational model considered as
belonging to the Old Regime and an education model much more recognisable nowadays. Stage 2. Analysis and discussion of the schooling accounts The second stage of this research set out to perform a critical and comparative analysis of the three accounts obtained in the first stage, once the narrations had the form of the school life history in first person, and we had carried out the contextualised analysis of the same. This way, and after a careful rereading of each of these narratives, we identified certain landmarks in the school life history of each of these women which we have termed dilemmas (ideasstrength) with the aim to draw attention to them in order to question them, or if you prefer to debate on them in more detail and reconsider them with a certain renewed look, based on the words of the protagonists. Knowing that the dilemmas we finally selected are the result of a process in which the discourses of the protagonists are combined with those of the researchers and that the said
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Fig. 3. Historical–cultural context of the three schooling accounts.
process gives necessary priority to certain issues and ignores others, we have been guided in this thematic selection by various criteria. Firstly, as we have mentioned, the dilemmas arise from the very discourses of the protagonists as elements to which they award certain relevance in their own school history. Furthermore, the dilemmas are selected on the basis of their importance, their pertinence, and are of a transgenerational nature. In this sense, important arguments are those that the women themselves have identified as being relevant throughout their narration, aspects or concerns that appear in a reiterated way, time and again in their discourses and that appear to form the backbone of their schooling memories. Pertinent matters are those that adjust to the final objective of this work which is ultimately to know more and better understand how the different school models have contributed to the configuration of the different feminine identities. The dilemmas chosen are expressly transgenerational, since they have been present in one form or another in the three life histories. That said, the formal presentation of each dilemma has always been undertaken by one of our protagonists, who in each case appears in the text as the spokesperson and as central organiser of the debate. We were interested with this resource to show how this problem is approached and resolved in each of the three generations, the further aim being to know the dilemma in its evolutional dimension. Therefore, each theme dealt with put forward tendencies of evolution and change in the education system and also in society (which is inevitable if we consider that the school is no more than another social institution). This way, once we have situated and placed the
three generations in dialogue with each other in terms of each of the problems considered, we have attempted to widen our scopes towards the way in which such dilemmas are being developed in current society, how they were affecting other contemporary women, and what significance the said problems have acquired in the development of women's education in modern Spain. The dilemmas analysed in the second stage of the research are summarised in this figure (Fig. 4) and are explained briefly below4. Dilemma 1: “In class we were all together, boys and girls, big and small” (Piedad, 1st generation). The schooling accounts of Piedad, Luisa and Sofia have allowed us to be spectators of how the national education has been shaped to the way we know it today. This was a system that from its outset, at the start of the 20th century, was unstructured, precarious in terms of material resources and personnel and barely efficient in its mission to teach elementary literacy. In fact, the conditions in which Piedad underwent her passage through formal education send us back to the “unitary” rural school,5 with scarce resources and what was the predominant school model in its day, seeing that in 1923, 92% of schools were “unitary” (Viñao, 2004, p. 25). This situation was to last for a long period of time, since, despite the existence of the relevant legislation (the first in 1898), the graded school model was introduced into our
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Fig. 4. Dilemmas under debate in Stage 2 of the research.
country very slowly. This slowness of the expansion process of the graded school is affirmed when we compare basic schooling in the school accounts of Piedad and her daughter Luisa. Even though more than 25 years had passed between the two narrations, it is as if time had stood still in the school both had inhabited. Despite all this, Luisa had already experienced a type of schooling with a much more complete organisation in grades and levels that had taken place in different institutions. From a unitary rural school she progressed to take the “bachillerato” (secondary education, at that time) and from there to Primary School Teaching in a religious boarding school. Naturally, Sofía's schooling was carried out according to a rigidly graded system, structured in years, cycles and levels very similar to the current one (although with different terminology), and from which we can consider that her account reveals the full maturity of the graded model of schooling. The study of these three school life histories has allowed us to confirm that the progressive adoption of a graded school model brought with it changes that affected all aspects of the curriculum such as school subjects that were regulated in the different study programmes, the systems of evaluation and promotion of the students or school materials, and that these changes produced in a parallel way the regulating of the teaching profession and a successive specialisation of teaching staff.
than in the two other cases. Even more so the Piedad's schooling was intermittently interrupted by having to carry out certain tasks to help the family economy or housekeeping, hence the expression “short childhood” referring to the period of childhood prevalent at that time (Escolano, 2000), a model experienced by both Piedad and Luisa. As we know, for centuries children shared with adults work and play activities and it has only been in recent times when childhood has been considered as a period of “nature” different from adulthood, which has been influenced by the contributions of certain sciences such as biology, psychology, and pedagogy, as well as the changes in lifestyle and the production systems of western societies that have very markedly changed child rearing habits. Particularly, our protagonists show us how the progressive extension of schooling is the cause and consequence of this model of long childhood that has been established itself in our country throughout the twentieth century (Gimeno, 2003). All this allows us to pinpoint why in Sofia's account we have not found any hint of the work described by her mother and grandmother and which were an important contribution to the family economy, and yet we find a long period of schooling (20 years), since the childhood period has progressively acquired characteristics of its own, occupying areas that are different and separated from those of adults (chiefly school time) and have been becoming longer in terms of time, as is the situation we know today.
Dilemma 2:
Dilemma 3:
“I didn't go to school very much (…). I practically always had to help at home and work on the farm” (Piedad, 1st generation).
“At school, we girls did sewing and embroidery (…) while the boys drew” (Luisa, 2nd generation).
Thanks to the analysis of this second dilemma, we have been able to affirm that the schooling of these three generations is affected by the model of childhood predominant at the time. This led, as in Piedad's case to the period of compulsory schooling being much shorter (barely five years)
The narratives of the three protagonists have illustrated rather clearly what since historical and sociological studies have been termed stages or phases through which the women's education has passed (Calvo, 2005; Subirats i Martori, 2006; Fernández Enguita, 1999; Hey, 1996; Skelton, 1997) and that in Spanish context have been summarised in
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three: the exclusion from the formal educational system or schooling of women in a very precarious way (in Piedad's case); the segregated schooling in terms of gender (Luisa); and the large scale integration of women in the education system (Sofía). Nevertheless, the debate continues as to whether this introduction has actually meant a change in the dominant male symbolic (coeducation) or more a case of women's enforced adaptation to the men's world that already existed (mixed schooling). In the case of Piedad and Luisa there is a certain degree of feminization of the curriculum in compulsory education that has been softened to a large extent by their attending a mixed school, although it was not considered by the laws in force nor were the most common practises in Spain at that time in which schools separated according to sex were most dominant. Feminization appears for both in their post compulsory education studies and it is experienced by Luisa to a much stronger extent during her “bachillerato” and Primary School Teaching students in the Convent School. The feminine curriculum is presented at this moment through curricular cultures and practises such as school materials, academic subjects and the feminization of the teaching staff. Finally, Sofía receives her schooling in a mixed regime typical of modern democratic systems which has allowed her greater freedom in her academic and professional choices. This has enabled her to study a degree still very strongly masculinised in Spain (Alberdi, Escario & Matas, 2000; Sebastián, Málik & Sánchez, 2001; Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008), that of engineering. Dilemma 4: “I think that (…) going to a religious school (…) has made a necessary mark on me.” (Luisa, 2nd generation). This fourth problem which, like the previous one, is very strongly present in the second protagonist's account, has allowed us to look into what has been the role of the catholic religion in the life and schooling of the women. Analysing questions such as the presence of religion in classroom readings, academic disciplines, the festivities, and school rituals, we have been able to state a progressive withdrawal of the influence of religion in education and in society in general, a question that, as sociological studies have pointed out, is related with the level of the political and economic development of the country. This is what is known as the secularisation thesis (Requena, 2006). In this way, Piedad's account carries us back to a society at the start of the 20th century where religion is present in the daily life of the whole community and where the educational work of the catholic church was not only visible in the control over school establishments, but also in the control exercised both in public and political life, as well as in people's private lives (De Puelles, 1991; Escolano, 2002). On this point, there would have been little difference between the types of society in which Piedad and Luisa lived, since Franco's dictatorship increased the power and influence of Catholicism in political and social spheres, returning religion to the status it had enjoyed in other periods. Therefore, Luisa's school life history reflects this influence in areas such as religious and political indoctrination that took
place via educational subjects (as religion, “forming of the national spirit,” and physical education), or by means of the role of religious organisations had in women's education. Finally the case of Sofia reflects a social and educational reality where the weight of religion gradually gives way as the democratic system and industrialization take root in the country. This way, although the catholic religion has certain presence in Spanish schools (through the celebration of religious festivities and through school subjects such as “Catholic Religion”), the Spanish State recognised itself as being undenominational in 1978 and, as our protagonist has made clear in her account, it is not the religious ideas that in these moments appear to dictate the norms of behaviour or ways of being a woman that are present in Spanish society. Dilemma 5: “For those of us who have studied, work is an important and fundamental part of our lives” (Sofía, 3rd generation). The relationship between women's education and their progressive access to the labour market is perfectly manifest in our three life histories. Thus, starting from the accounts of our protagonists we can establish a sequence of three moments that reflect the progressive approximation of women to the paid labour market (Lagrave, 1992; García Lastra, 2005). Firstly, the story of Piedad shows the lack of possibilities for gaining access to the working world beyond household and agricultural tasks so characteristic of the rural world at that time. Her daughter, however, thanks to furthering her studies beyond compulsory education, has the possibility to create a niche for herself in the professional world with those jobs which during the Franco dictatorship were deemed as being an extension of the caring tasks traditionally attributed to women (in particular, the role of primary school teacher). Finally, the story of Sofia (3rd generation) allows us to biographically identify a third moment of history in which women have been able to access work traditionally conceived as being for men. Without a doubt the situation of Piedad must be read in its historic context given that at the start of the twentiethcentury women represented only 18% of the total of salaried workers in Spain, starting their working lives between nine and fourteen years old, and ending, normally, the moment they were married (Cabrera, 2005, p. 83). Although Luisa may have lived in a rural environment very similar to that of Piedad, the importance that her family gives to education and her success in her studies makes it possible for her to become a schoolteacher, a work opportunity that allows her to form part of the labour market from the standpoint of a job well considered by Franco supporters (Flecha, 1997), bearing in mind the express prohibition of the time for women to accede to certain jobs, and especially married women.6 Finally, Sofia underlines in her account the freedom with which she chose her studies and her job and places at the centre of her life the professional career she has developed. As occurred with previous generations, her situation well represents the world in which she lives in which the presence of women in the labour market has become the norm (currently, women represent 43% of the Spanish working
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population — Institute of Women (Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008). In the same way, her biographical account contains some problems that Spanish women are experiencing in terms of their insertion in the labour market (differences in salaries, greater rates of unemployment and part-time work). In some authors' opinions, this could be partly down to the fact that this incorporation happened intensively in the space of only two decades, reaching in this brief period of time levels of the most developed European countries (García Lastra, 2005). Dilemma 6: “I had teachers who conditioned me to a very great extent/ had a great influence on me” (Sofia, 3rd generation). Lastly, and basing our thoughts on Sofia's account of her schooling, we have been able to consider the importance certain teachers played in the development of our protagonists and their later professional choices. With this dilemma we ask ourselves a number of questions about the teaching profession, the systems of access and the regulation of the profession, as well as particular experiences that the pedagogical relationship provided these women. This way, the memories that Piedad has about her teachers helps us to recognise a model of the pedagogical relationship based on the idea of respect which characterised at that time all relationships with adults in general. Her words appear to reflect to perfection this teaching model in which the teacher was granted an important moral and intellectual authority and was awarded a social role in the civic education of the pupils that will start to disappear later. Similarly, thanks to her account we can also follow the trail of how the teaching profession is constructed. In Luisa's case, the influence of the schoolmistresses is fundamental during her studies of “bachillerato” (secondary education) and Primary School Teaching studies, both in terms of the description that she offers us about the pedagogical relationship she establishes with some nunteachers, and the hostile atmosphere that existed for her in the boarding school, which led her to seek shelter in her studies. Furthermore, through Luisa's account we have also studied the instrumentalisation that Franco's regime had on the teaching profession, particular in the case of schoolmistresses (Gallego, 1983; Rabazas & Ramos, 2006). Finally, Sofia tells in the same way how important the teacher figure was in her professional and academic decisionmaking. This is why at a particular moment of her education, she opts to study technically-oriented studies. Here, Sofia also represents an even smaller percentage of women, no more than 30% (Instituto de la Mujer-INE, 2008), who decide to enroll on “traditionally” male degree courses, seeing that as we know, the choice of one type of studies or another is not made freely but continues to be conditioned by the roles society assigns to men and women (Agirre, 2001). Final thoughts The way in which we have tackled this research, and which has led us to face two discursive approaches (the narratives of the women and the meta-relates that come from
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different academic fields), allows us to trace certain constants between generations, some breakaways or breaches in the school history, some contradictions that the History of education should continue to look into, and finally, certain metamorphosis of the social and educational models that were in operation in the different time periods analysed. Therefore, we can appreciate that the constants that exist between the social and educational models experienced by different generations are much more numerous and clear between the 1st and 2nd generations and these are shown for example, when analysing the model of childhood that both lived or the prevalence of a morality strongly influenced by the religion that dominated society and schools in their period of childhood. Secondly, these accounts show us breakaways such as the one we have seen between the 1st and 2nd generations and the 3rd in terms of the influence of religion on society and school, much less present in the case of Sofia; or the departure represented by Sofia's acceding to an engineering course when compared to the educational and working opportunities of the previous two generations. Thirdly, we come across various interesting contradictions that need to be researched further. For example, it is worth noting how, in the case of Piedad and Luisa, their first schooling in a unitary school forced them to receive an education contrary to that imposed by the ideology and law at the time (separation of the sexes), which no doubt led them to lead a school life different from that experienced by other women in urban environments. Likewise, there is also a contradiction in how, despite the fact that the (feminine) teaching body was one of the principal instruments at the service of Franco's regime, this said profession is held to be an area of freedom where women could have access to culture and thus had the possibility to build a certain degree of resistance to the totalitarian regime in which they lived. Finally, an example of metamorphosis for us would be to understand how, although economic and material conditions were not provided for this, the model of feminine education (and therefore sexual segregation of the curriculum) tried to create a niche for itself in the poorest schools in our country (in the rural schools) by means of some reading books specifically aimed at girls; and how, also, this took on a different character depending on the sex of the teacher (seeing that, for example, only women were authorised to teach embroidery and sewing). It has not been our intention here to exhaust the debate on the History of Education of women in this century, but more draw up new perspectives that might open up new problems based on this theme. Therefore, apart from the six discussion points we have explored in this research, there is a set of problems or dilemmas that remain open, such as for example, what were the resources that schools were setting in motion in order to occupy the pupils who could not keep up the required pace, what was the world of classmates like, and what was the relationship of the younger generations with women's movements and feminist conquests, and so forth. These questions have only been pencilled in here and we hope to be able to pick them up in later work. Our aim, in whatever case, has not only been to go over the past (which is essential in itself), but delving into the past also helps ourselves to consider how we wish to live and build the present and the future.
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Endnotes 1 The resource of using the first person in writing up life histories has been used and defended by several authors (Denzin, 1994; Tierney, 2000; Subirats, 2006). 2 In an attempt to preserve confidentiality, fictitious names have been used in this study. 3 It is not possible to summarise in the short space of this article the life stories of the three protagonists without oversimplifying their narration. We therefore invite those readers interested to see further Calvo, García and Susinos (2008). 4 Given the space available, we give here a necessary simplification of the multiple and contradictory debates that have been put forward in the research. We ask the reader to see our work (Calvo, García & Susinos, 2008; Calvo, Susinos & García, 2008). 5 Most children in rural schools were grouped together regardless of age or sex. This institution is called “Escuelas unitarias” (unitary schools), as opposed to graded schools. 6 Among others, the Royal Decree of 1938, the Order of 26 March 1946, or the Law of 13 July 1940 on Public Employment set down the conditions which women had to fulfil in order to take different state employment entrance exams. This body of legislation was not to be modified until 1961 by the “Law of Political, Professional and Working Rights of Women.”
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