The Contemporary Feminist Movement in Spain:

Abstract

As a Human Development and Social Relations major with a concentration in Women's Studies, I have a special interest in studying social personas, especially how sex roles manifest themselves in any given society. For the last few months I have been attending meetings and workshops, conducting interviews, and studying texts of various feminist groups and government run agencies in Madrid, Spain. I have tried to focus my cultural study of the contemporary feminist movement in Spain around the issues of pornography and prostitution, but have also allowed for a brief analysis of institutionalized feminism to provide some context for the former. After a discussion of how feminism is perceived by young women in both Spain and the United States I will prove that feminism is socially constructed and at the same time constructing society. In order to understand the characteristics of the present day feminist movement in Spain it is necessary to go back in time and look at the political and social developments of the 20th Century.