Women's Participation in Paid Production Under Capitalism: The Spanish Experience

This article presents an analysis of the changes that have taken place in Spain regarding women's participation in production in and outside of the home, and focuses primarily on the 1940-72 period. The effects on women's work of changes in the economic structure generated by capitalist develop ment are examined in relation to the two spheres of home and paid production, and the interaction between the two spheres is emphasized. The gradual shift from a stagnant economy and rigid government regulations of the earlier period to a rapidly growing and industrializing market economy is viewed as the basis for the gradual increase in the absorption of female labor in the sphere of paid production. The relationship between this absorption and the liberalization of the highly discriminatory labor legislation set up at the beginning of the period is examined. Finally, the last part of the paper includes an analysis of the limits of this liberalization and the contradictions generated by a process of change which has taken place within an essentially static political model.