SCHOLASTIC PROGRAMS AND ROLES TRANSMISSION DURING FRANCO’S DICTATORSHIP: EDUCATION FOR MATERNITY

Abstract

In this study we attempt to analyse the educational model that was imposed upon women during the Franco regime in Spain. Segregating roles and assigning stereotypical behaviors to each sex, defining the destinies of both men and women. The Church and the Falange created a female model that lasted throughout the years of the dictatorship. They reinstituted traditional values in Spanish society and projected the beliefs of National Catholicism on education, returning to the old ideal of womanhood that limited women to the domestic sphere, strengthening her role as wife and mother. This ideology was propagated in all educational centers through specific subjects. Women were educated for the home duties, marriage and motherhood from their childhood. This domestic trilogy confined them to a private and exclusive life. Motherhood and the continuation of the species represented women’s «supreme mission», their only destiny and recognised means of selfrealization in cultural terms. Girls were educated from a very young age in what was considered to be their exclusive mission.