CHANGE

some questionable statements about women’s working roles. And when it comes to the workplace itself, the proportion of women in managerial positions remains around a third of that of men with the numbers dropping even further as careers progress. There is work

HOW TO BE A ‘GOOD WIFE’: A

to do and Spanish women earn around 10% (about €6,000) less per year than men and occupy more than 70% of part-time contracts. Of

1950’s pamphlet these women, 46% affirm they are part-time because they care for dependents or cannot afford childcare services.

WHEN chemistry graduate Robina (Valladolid, 1965) joined Vitoria’s Michelin factory in 1988, she was the only woman there. Now she’s the first female boss for Iberia, responsible for a €2.6 billion turnover and 7,300 employees – most of whom (despite her sterling example) are men. ‘It is difficult for us to find women to fill mechanical positions,’ she says, blaming childhood stereotyping that leads to the notion there are things that girls just don’t do.

GO-GO FRANCO

CARNIVAL organisers who warned participating floats against playing sexist songs during their parades have been likened to officials from the Franco era.

Those taking part in the amazing orgy of fancy dress, street parades and pageantry were told they could lose their public subsidies if they played songs on a proscribed list.

The festival, held each February, is a huge event in the community that inspires young and old, but there have long been accusations that it harbours a dark side that seems to revel in chauvinism.

Accordingly, in recent years there has been a groundswell of public support to combat this by town halls in Catalunya.

Reading between the lines

Nothing can show how far women’s rights have moved forward from the female author censorship of the Franco era, than to have an all female bookshop in the heart of the capital.

Glass Ceilings

Winning women the vote had opposition from a surprising source, writes Dilip Kuner

THE UK has Emmiline Pankhurst, Spain has Clara Campoamor when it comes to icons of women’s suffrage.

Born in Madrid, Campoamor was one of the first women to enter Parliament in Spain and had a long history of feminism and campaigning for universal suffrage.

During the 1931 elections women could not vote but they could stand to be MPs. Campoamor and fellow lawyer Victoria Kent were the only two women elected.

Their work on the Constitutional Committee helped to enshrine the principle that women had the same rights as men in the Spanish Constitution of 1931with one glaring disagreement.

Malaga-born Kent, as a member of the Radical Socialist Republican Party, felt that it was too soon to allow women the vote.

Far left thought at the time was that women tended to be too conservative and in thrall to the Catholic Church and so would most likely vote right wing.

Campoamor, a member of the Radical Party, saw it as a human rights issue and was instrumental in achieving suffrage for women in time for the 1933 elections after ‘winning’ a debate with Kent.

Campoamor and Kent had already shown them-

LAWYER: Kent was one of the first female MPs selves to be an inspiration to women. They were the first two female members of the Madrid Law Association having both broken a glass ceiling by entering university to study law.

Campoamor went into exile during the Civil War and died in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1972 at the age of 82.

Kent too was exiled and died in New York aged 96 in 1987.

But some have argued that the issue has been muddied by the difficulty in determining which lyrics are actually denigrating to women and which are merely ‘sexy’.

And efforts to root out offending songs harkens back to the censorious days of Franco, according to one organiser.

The song ‘SloMo’, sung by Spanish star Chanel (pictured above), has been flagged as problematic, even though the singer claims to be committed to the cause of gender equality.

The Catalan town of Calafell, along the beach road where hundreds of dancers and floats were getting ready for Carnival, found itself at the centre of the debate.

Sexist

According to Pere Nin, a float organiser, each town has its own list of banned songs, and beforehand, the floats have to give the town the names of the songs it wants to play.

Nin was one of the original organisers who helped draw up the rules against sexist lyrics back in 2019.

“It’s one thing if a song is obviously sexist,” he said. “It’s another when a song has a line or a word that might offend.”

Another much-loved song, ‘Suavemente’, by Elvis Crespo, has also been banned, causing people to question the whole project.

Dancer Sara Coam said there is no room for macho music that objectifies women, while her friend Marta Tamayo said it is more complicated.

“If people would stop listening, the artists would stop writing sexist lyrics,” she said.

DJ Miguel Aguila, who was also on hand, said he is against the bans altogether.

Even instigator Pere Nin is having his doubts, being old enough to remember the dark days of Franco.

“It’s starting to remind me of other periods we’d rather not remember,” he said.