Author Description

Free Women based their activities upon the dialog, the solidarity and the equality of differences. It was therefore a model for the social movements of the current dialogical societies of the XXIst Century, in which these elements basic are to overcome the social inequalities. Free Women organization was created in the framework of the libertarian movement shortly before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It was one of the movements with greatest impact upon the lives of the worker and peasant women. More than twenty thousand women enrolled the organization, almost all of them young women, workers and with no academic education. They got organized in order to overcome what they called the triple slavery of the worker woman: slavery as a woman, slavery as a worker and slavery for the lack of opportunities to gain access to education. They were the main actresses of the complete transformation of their own lives. They didn't only claim for labor and social equality, but they also transformed their personal relationships, love and the sexuality, contributing to the overcoming of a traditional masculinity model based upon power relationships and double standards. Laura Ruiz is a researcher at the University of Barcelona.