The 1931 Constitution granted suffrage to women

The Second Republic (1931-1936) generated important legislative work and women were granted many new rights of which they had been hitherto deprived. The 1931 Constitution granted suffrage to women. Spain was therefore one of the first among South European states to enfranchise women. In 1932, laws on divorce and civil marriage were passed. Women were accorded full legal status; abortion was legalised, the crime of adultery was abolished and legal measures ensuring women's equal access to the labour market were taken.

The Second Republic: The conquery of women’s vote

Women’s vote was given in the context of the reforms introduced in the legislation of the Spanish Second Republic (1931-1936). The political coherence of politicians self-called “democratic” forced a revision of discriminatory laws and the concession of women’s right to vote. The process was a complex one. It was common ground for both left and right wing parties that most women, with the strong influence of the Catholic Church, were deeply conservative.

Some important feminists such as Margarita Nelken (on the left) and the radical socialist Victoria Kent (on the right), who had been elected MPs for the Constitutive Parliament of 1931, rejected the concession of women’s right to vote. They thought women were not yet ready to assume the right to vote and if given, their vote would be in the benefit of the most conservative forces.

Clara Campoamor

Clara Campoamor, also MP of the Radical Party, assumed apassionate defense of feminine vote. She argued at the Parliament that individual rights required an equal treatment for both men and women and democratic principles had to ensure the writing of a republican Constitution based on equality and on the elimination of any discrimination based on sex. According to a decree passed by the provisional republican government in May 1931 men over 23 were given the right to vote. Women and priests had no right to vote, but could be elected to Parliament. Clara Campoamor and Victoria Kent were the only elected MPs among 465 members in the Parliament. Margarita Nelken entered Parliament by the end of that year.

The debate in the Republican Parliament

The debate which took place in the Republican Constitutive Parliament regarding women’s vote is one of the most interesting of the period, due to the alteration of the classic division between right and left. Left wing republicans, radical socialists and radicals were the political groups which opposed most to the concession of women’s right to vote. The central idea of their perspective was

the belief that women’s vote would be a conservative one. However, within the debate some droll arguments slipped in: that women’s vote could turn into a source of disagreement for couples; that women were not capable of voting as they were mainly dominated by emotion and not reflections; women lacked

intelligence and drive etc. To avoid these women’s incapability some MPs proposed to limit the right to vote to women over 45, or it was even considered

to pass an election law that allowed women’s vote provisionally– it it was discovered that women’s vote was mainly for the most conservative parties women’s vote would be suppressed again!

The result of the debate

In the end suffragette thesis won 161 to 121. Socialists voted for women’s right to vote in coherence with their ideological principles, with some relevant exception as Indalecio Prieto who even stated that women’s vote was a ‘tab against the Republic’. Some small republican groups and the right wing parties also voted for women’s right to vote. The right wing parties led by the idea -later proved to be wrong– that women’s vote would be massively conservative. The fact that in the 1933 elections, the first ones in which women could vote, the parties of the right won made many state the feminine natural tendency towards voting conservative. The 1936 victory of the Popular Front came to deny such ideas.

The 1931 Constitution

The 1931 Constitution meant an enormous advance in the fight for women’s rights. Not only did it include in its text women’s right to vote but everything related to the family was legislated from a perspective of freedom and equality: marriage based on equality between husband and wife, right to vote, parents’ duties with their siblings...

The Divorce Law (1932) also meant a milestone in the attainment of women’s rights. Very advanced for the time the law was passed after a great controversy in which the Church threatened not to administer the sacraments to the divorced who remarried. Despite the absence of a powerful feminist movement, the Republic was placing Spain in legal aspects at the same level of the most evolved

countries concerning equality between the sexes. In this aspect, the 1936 military rising and the Civil War put an end to this evolution. The division of Spain in two opposing and belligerent societies had an immediate reflex in women conditions.