Mujeres Libres
Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organisation that existed in Spain from 1936 to 1939. Founded by Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada, and Amparo Poch y Gascón as a small women's group in Madrid, it rapidly grew to a national federation of 30,000 members at its height in the summer of 1938.
It emerged from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement, composed of three main organisations: the CNT union; the FAI federation; and the FIJL youth wing. Many women who participated in these groups felt that their issues were being ignored by the predominantly male anarchists. As a result, the autonomous Mujeres Libres groups were created, pursuing both women's liberation and the anarchist social revolution. They argued that the two objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel. Aiming towards the empowerment of working class women, they organised activities ranging from education programs and technical classes to childcare centres and maternity care.
While Mujeres Libres sought recognition as the fourth main organisation within the anarchist movement, they never formally achieved equal status to the other branches. Founded in the Second Spanish Republic, the group followed the anarchists in supporting the Republican faction when the Spanish Civil War began. Upon victory by the opposing Nationalist forces in 1939, Mujeres Libres collapsed, and the anarchist movement as a whole was outlawed.
Context
Women in Spain in the years before 1936 were markedly unequal to men. In employment, they dealt with poor working conditions, ranging from unhygienic workplaces to a consistently lower pay than men for the same work. The literacy rate across Spain in this period was low for both men and women, but consistently lower for the latter. The female illiteracy rate in 1930 reached as high as 60% in the southern parts of Spain, and as high as 30% in the Basque region. This limited the political involvement and social mobility of working class women.Women were also largely confined to the domestic sphere. Typically, women had the primary responsibility for raising children, restricting them in ways men did not experience. Where women were employed, they usually worked in the home, doing either domestic work or working in their own house, doing piecework in industries such as textiles.
Women in the anarchist movement
The anarchist movement was nominally committed to equality, declaring that "the two sexes will be equal, both in rights and in obligation." In practice, however, there were numerous shortcomings with respect to this goal. The unequal nature of Spanish society meant that women constituted a minority in most workplaces, stifling the capacity of women to participate in the CNT in particular. Even where women represented a majority, the anarchist trade unions made little effort to organise women, perceiving them as potential strike-breakers.One reason that sexist beliefs remained so prominent was that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, often referred to as 'the father of anarchism', had openly believed that women were inferior, and advocated in his writings that women should remain in domestic roles even following the anarchist revolution.
Even for the most egalitarian-minded men, it has been commented that "the anarchist utopia stopped at the front door". Sara Berenguer and Pepita Carpeña, who later became members of Mujeres Libres, reported witnessing sexism in FIJL youth groups, which were notable hotbeds of such behaviour.
Founding
Other anarchist women, notably Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Mercedes Comaposada, had similar experiences with sexism. Following their realisation of the extent of sexism within the CNT in 1933, the two began discussing the issue. By 1935, they had begun to form the first Mujeres Libres group in Madrid. Together with Dr Amparo Poch y Gascón, the three women are considered the 'initiators' of the Mujeres Libres movement, an effort to empower Spanish women.In 1934, a similar but separate group was founded in Barcelona by CNT members, including Soledad Estorach, in an effort to involve women in the anarchist movement. The Grupo Cultural Feminino or 'Feminine Culture Group' was thus formed, growing into a Catalan regional organisation entirely independently of Mujeres Libres.
When the two groups discovered each other in late 1936, the latter decided to affiliate itself with the Madrid group, and renamed itself Agrupación Mujeres Libres. As time went on, numerous other Mujeres Libres branches formed across the country. They remained essentially independent of each other in all but name until, in August 1937, 90 local Mujeres Libres groups formally established a national federation. As the movement grew, it reached a height of 30,000 members in the summer of 1938.
Magazine
From September to November 1935, Lucía Sánchez Saornil and CNT National Secretary corresponded publicly through the pages of the anarchist newspaper Solidaridad Obrera regarding the position of women within the anarchist movement. Rodríguez Vázquez was generally sympathetic towards the position of women, recognising that many men held a position of power over their partners at home, and even offering that Solidaridad Obrera dedicate one page each week to women. However, Sánchez Saornil was sharply critical of the way in which anarchist women were encouraged into the movement, arguing with reference to men's sexist attitudes that "The vast majority of male comrades... have minds infected with the most typical bourgeois prejudices."Combined with her dissatisfaction with Vázquez's assertion that men were not to blame for holding onto their privilege by neglecting the cause of women, this led her to announce in one article her intention to create of a full journal devoted entirely to the cause of women, rather than just one page. The announcement in April of the following year that this project would go ahead generated widespread support among anarchists and marked the full emergence of the Mujeres Libres organisation into the public eye. The first issue of the Mujeres Libres magazine was published on May 20, 1936, and ran for 14 issues.
Philosophy
As participants in the anarcho-syndicalist movement, Mujeres Libres believed in the abolition of the state and of capitalism. Many anarchists at the time presumed that gender inequality was a product of these economic hierarchies, and that it would disappear once the social revolution had been achieved. However, following their negative experiences within male-dominated anarchist groups, the anarchist women who founded Mujeres Libres began to reject the idea that the struggle for gender equality was subordinate to the wider class struggle for economic equality.This was reflected in their statement of purpose, which argued that women should be emancipated from their "triple enslavement"—to their own ignorance, to gender inequality, and to capitalism. The reference to 'ignorance' stemmed from a belief that women had an additional 'internal' struggle to overcome—women had to respect themselves in order to gain respect from and achieve equality with men.
Views on feminism
While Mujeres Libres believed that men and women were equal, they rejected the label of feminism. Instead, they typically referred to their ideology as 'humanism'. This was because they believed that gender inequality could not be solved separately from economic inequality. For example, they believed that prostitution was a form of exploitation of women that arose partially due to the desperate circumstances of poverty; as a result, their attempts to eradicate the practice focused on creating women's shelters rather than banning the practice.Autonomy
Compared to other leftist women's organizations in Spain at the time, Mujeres Libres was unique in that it insisted on remaining autonomous from its sister organisations, the male-dominated CNT, FAI, and FIJL. They did so in order to fully address women's issues, arguing that autonomy and separation would allow them to act independently towards organising and empowering women. It insisted it was an integral part of the libertarian movement, but it still chose not to request voting delegates at meetings of the three other organisations. It did so to preserve its autonomy—Mujeres Libres wished to participate in the movement, but it did not wish be bound by its resolutions and thus lose independence.Mujeres Libres Anthem
The Mujeres Libres Anthem, written by Lucía Sánchez Saornil in 1937, reads as follows:Actions and achievements
The chief aims of Mujeres Libres were the incorporation of more women into the anarchist movement, and the empowerment of women within it. To this end, the groups' first actions were the creation of networks of women through the creation of women-only social groups. The existence of these groups increased the visibility of anarchist women and bolstered their cause, particularly by providing a space to discuss strategies for combating sexism on both individual and collective levels.The organization produced propaganda through radio, travelling libraries, and propaganda tours, in order to promote their cause. Organizers and activists travelled through rural parts of Spain to set up rural collectives and support women in the country, encouraging women to become anarchist and participate in both Mujeres Libres and the CNT. Mujeres Libres also produced their women-run magazine, alongside various pamphlets and other publications, to keep its members informed. The magazine addressed working class women and focused on "awakening the female conscience toward libertarian ideas."
Mujeres Libres often collaborated with the anarchist humanitarian organisation Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista, of which Lucía Sánchez Saornil was general secretary. They provided assistance to refugees and wounded soldiers during the Civil War.