Gender education in francoist period: a study through school notebooks

Abstract

Studying the gender variable from a historic and social perspective enables us to endow schooling and educational processes with a crucial role in fostering the building of pupils’ gender identity without any kind of discrimination. This research focuses on a specific period in Spain’s history, namely, Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975), when schools were the perfect setting for creating socially stratified gender identities, by analysing the processes of education and socialisation involved. The study focuses on the transmission of the regime’s established values and principles during that era. This is a descriptive study, following a methodological strategy of a qualitative nature for analysing the content of 70 schoolbooks belonging to Salamanca University’s Museum of Education - Centro Museo Pedagógico. The content analysis is based on five separate but interrelated study variables: the image of the family, education for homemaking in the syllabus, and the principles of obedience, religion and loyalty to the state. The findings show us that the education received at school in terms of principles and characteristics informs a specific and concrete model of womanhood in stark contrast to men’s position. Today, within the framework of social education, efforts are being made to reverse the negative effects this socialisation of gender had on a generation educated according to completely different gender roles and stereotypes, and which has given rise to a lack of social justice, fairness and equality between the sexes.