«Contrasting Images of Women Scientists in the Early Postwar Period (1940-1945) and the Novel 'María Elena, ingeniero de caminos' by Mercedes Ballesteros» (original) (raw)

«Contrasting Images of Women Scientists in the Early Postwar Period (1940-1945) and the Novel 'María Elena, ingeniero de caminos' by Mercedes Ballesteros»

V. L. Ketz, D. Smith-Sherwood and D. Faszer-McMahon (Eds.), A Laboratory of Her Own. Women and Science in Spanish Culture, Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 2021, pp. 207-234.

This study analyzes how the official rhetoric in Spain portrayed women scientists and female intellectuals in the period directly following the Spanish Civil War, between 1940 and 1945. These years have special relevance because they constitute the so-called five-year blue period (quinquenio azul) of Francoism; that is to say, those most influenced by the Falange, the Mussolini-inspired movement founded in October of 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera and subsequently employed by Franco to ideologically mask, under the auspices of a political movement, what was in fact a military dictatorship. The discourse of the regime, following the lead of both the Catholic Church and the Falange, was deeply restrictive of women’s rights and focused on the indoctrination of women according to the vision of society supported by the dictatorship. Most publications disseminated at the time were written by men linked to the Franco regime, and representations of women tended to focus on appropriate conduct and traditional feminine roles, relegating women to the private sphere and excluding them from public life and thus from scientific participation.