Women in the workforce in Francoist Spain
In Francoist Spain, women faced strong discrimination and were pushed toward traditional family roles. After the Civil War, the regime restored old laws and treated women as legally inferior to men, making it hard for them to work outside the home.
In the 1940s, women met many barriers to joining the workforce. They could be fined for working, forced to quit when they married, and had only a few legal occupations available. When married, many women needed their husband’s permission to work, and some laws even required a wife to leave her job after marriage. If women did work, they usually earned less than men for the same jobs.
The 1940s also saw women limited in education and in the professions. High‑paid, professional roles such as lawyers, judges, diplomats, and many government positions were closed to them. Training in medicine and nursing was biased by gender, with a view that “caring” should be the woman’s role and “healing” the domain of men. Midwives and nurses faced a male-dominated medical system, and women were kept out of many areas of public life.
By the 1950s, Spain’s economy began to change, creating new pressure for women to work. Some groups, like Sección Feminina and Falange, offered limited childcare to support working women. Still, many women worked in low‑paid, precarious jobs—mostly as domestic helpers, shop clerks, or teachers—while most official work was described as “housewife” on women’s records. Salaries for women were often 30–50 percent lower than those for men, and many women faced double burdens of work and home duties.
Legal reforms in the 1950s and 1960s slowly began to ease some restrictions, though progress was cautious. The 1961 Law on Political Rights began to grant some rights to women, and in 1961 laws began to ban gender discrimination in many jobs, though exceptions remained for the judiciary, the armed forces, and the merchant navy. The same period saw steps toward equal pay for equal work and openings for single women to work in some roles, but married women still faced hurdles and required their husbands’ approval to start or continue employment until later reforms.
Unions were tightly controlled, with limited female participation outside the Falange-affiliated groups, and opposition movements for workers and women began to emerge more openly toward the end of the Franco period. By the late 1960s, some doors were opening: women could become magistrates and, in 1967, a decree supported equal pay for equal work.
In 1970, changes reached family life more directly. A decree granted maternity leave, allowing pregnant women to take time off with some protections, and it relaxed restrictions on apprenticeships and employment for women who were married. Women could sometimes stay in their jobs after marriage, or leave with compensation.
Overall, Francoist policy aimed to keep women in the home and subordinate to men, limiting education and career paths and keeping wages low. Yet, from the 1950s onward, economic needs and social changes slowly pushed more women into the workforce and initiated gradual legal reforms, setting the stage for further progress in the 1970s and beyond.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:08 (CET).