Believers with an own voice. The women’s prominence in the Women’s Catholic Action discourse during the first Francoism

Abstract

During the first Francoism, the Women’s Catholic Action association was an instrument to legitimate the New State and to spread the women’s ideal of motherhood and domesticity at the service of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. However, through the analysis of the discourse that they produced for their periodic publications, in this case focussed on the Valencian diocese, we can observe how women catholic activists developed an own voice which was silenced by the official discourse, and, without questioning their subordinate position, they were gaining prominence in their own association, in which they initially seemed absent. If we agree that identity is not a pre-existing or immutable category but a process in constant construction, neither can it be claimed that during the forties and early fifties it did not undergo transformations. Due to the experiences given by public participation in the catholic movement, during the forties and early fifties these women rediscovered themselves as subjects with agency and it was a first step to a following recognition of change in gender relations.