Mujeres Libres

Mujeres Libres (English: Free Women) was an anarchist women's organization in Spain that aimed to empower working class women. It was founded in 1936 by Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón and had approximately 30,000 members. The organization was based on the idea of a "double struggle" for women's liberation and social revolution and argued that the two objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel. In order to gain mutual support, they created networks of women anarchists. Flying day-care centres were set up in efforts to involve more women in union activities.^[1]

In revolutionary Spain of the 1930s, many anarchist women were angry with what they viewed as persistent sexism amongst anarchist men and their marginalized status within a movement that ostensibly sought to abolish domination and hierarchy. They saw women's problems as inseparable from the social problems of the day; while they shared their compañeros' desire for social revolution they also pushed for recognition of women's abilities and organized in their communities to achieve that goal. Citing the anarchist assertion that the means of revolutionary struggle must model the desired organization of revolutionary society, they rejected mainstream Spanish anarchism's assertion that women's equality would follow automatically from the social revolution. To prepare women for leadership roles in the anarchist movement, they organized schools, women-only social groups and a women-only newspaper so that women could gain self-esteem and confidence in their abilities and network with one another to develop their political consciousness.

Despite these activities, the group refused to identify itself as feminist due to feminism's perceived association with upper class, conservative women in Spain who called for bourgeois political reform.

Unlike other leftist women's organizations in Spain at the time, the Mujeres Libres was unique in that it insisted on remaining autonomous from the male-dominated CNT, FAI, and FIJL and fought for equal status with these established anarchist organizations.

See also

• Anarcha-feminism
• Anarchism in Spain
• Spanish Civil War

Related films

• Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996)

References

1. ^ Mujeres Libres - Women anarchists in the Spanish Revolution

• Aileen O'Carroll. "Mujeres Libres: Women anarchists in the Spanish Revolution". Workers Solidarity No 54. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws98/ws54_mujeres_libres.html. Retrieved September 27, 2005. 
• Dierdre Hogan. "Free Women of Spain". Workers Solidarity No 57. Archived from the original on October 23, 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20051023002218/http://www.infoshop.org/iau/spain1.html. Retrieved September 27, 2005. 
• Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
• On International Women's Day 2006 Angela Jackson spoke to a Belfast meeting on women and the scw.