Juncal´s essay, working women in the 70´s

Working women in the 70´s

We have chosen a topic related to social history, and that is also interesting nowadays: how women of our previous generation got into the labour market. We have interviewed two women, one worked in the private enterprise and the other one worked for the State. We have asked women of these age because we want to know by first hand how was the social change that was happening in Spain in those years.

Brief historical perspective of women at university.  Working and studying has not always been easy for women.  Traditionally, since centuries ago, women have been considered as unable for intellectual works. Even, in Medieval Europe, illustrated, intelligent or independent women were often considered as witches, their intelligence was considered to be taken from the devil in exchange for their souls.  One way or the other, intelligence did not seem to be a female  natural attribute.

So then centuries passed, but still in the 20^th century the conception didn’t change, at least in Spain. So therefore, women didn’t work. If the Second Republic implied some steps towards the equality of men and women at work, Franco`s political dictatorship and the social establishment meant several steps backwards. Laws were really strict, women needed their father´s or their husband`s permission. Even being a man was a condition to become a judge, a minister or a major. So the sixties and the seventies were a time of political and social change. Spain´s economy enlarged spectacularly thanks to the industry explosion, population grew due to the better nutrition that happened when the country overcame the destruction caused by the war and food production restarted. As a consequence, many jobs were created and there was a need of work force in the industry. So suddenly, there were many jobs women decided they were suitable for them, and started  going out to prove that. So there you could find a lot of women like our two interviewees: Luisa and María.

María is the first of 5 brothers (3 girls and 2 boys) . She says she didn’t go to university because as a girl she was not supposed to. Even though she was a good student she didn´t insisted in attending college.So she tarted to work when she finished the High School. Her first job was is a Sport and Leisure club making administrative and public relation tasks.After a few months there  she came to Madrid and was preparing state exams to get a job.She was working for the state administration for some years and she says that probably this is the kind of job that had less discrimination.She worked with  both women and men  and of course there were people that made sexist comments but she says that is like nowadays  and she never payed much attention to those comments.

She only had male bosses She never had a problem with any boss except for one who asked her how many children did she had and when answered three he wanted to know if he was planning to have more. She can´t tell us any problem of discrimination because she never suffered it and neither knows anybody who has.

She also gave her opinion on the topic. She thinks that sometimes women have some responsibility in the problem of discrimination because sometimes there are women that use their status as women to make excuses in her job. She thinks a woman should not do this because is cause a great damage to all the other women. Another bit of her opinion is that if  a woman ha  a child  it should be considered as a service for society. Obviously, society needs people, potential workers.

Luisa stopped studying when she finished High School. Then she started working because her family needed her to contribute to the family´s economy, because they wanted to move to a bigger house. So she worked in different places to earn as much as she could until she found a job in a transport company. There were only two women in the company, the rest were male truckers and male bosses too.

Luisa worked as a secretary and was acting as manager because her boss trusted her.  But although she was in charge of many important issues of the company, still she did not earn as much as a male manager would. She was working in this company for seventeen years and enjoyed much of her work, but one day she came across a male colleague who harassed her

This situation was as uncomfortable as today but society´s consideration was completely different from nowadays, so she decided to ignore him until he stopped. Unfortunately, one day he became her boss and took revenge with her and Luisa had to cope with it until she, together with her husband, (one of the truckers) decided that there was no need for her to keep working and she could stay at home with their son, taking care of him and watching he growing up. She thought that was the best way.

As a conclusion, we have seen two similar women  in very different working situations: one in a private company, the other working for the state: one suffering discrimination and harassment, the other not.  There is a clear difference between the public and the private environment: it seems that civil servants behaved more respectfully and politely than the private company workers, even though the background was probably equally sexist: unfortunately as sexist as Spanish society was at the time.