“Separate and Equal”?: Mujeres Libres and Anarchist Strategy for Women’s Emancipation

/ Zabalaza Books

“Separate and Equal”?: Mujeres Libres and Anarchist Strategy for Women’s Emancipation by Martha A. AckelsbergAuthor: Martha A. Ackelsberg  |  PDF file size: 665 KB

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In May 1936, a group of anarchist women founded Mujeres Libres, the first autonomous, proletarian feminist organisation in Spain… Its goal was to end the “triple enslavement of women, to ignorance, to capital, and to men.” While some of the founders were professional or semi-professional women, the vast majority of its members (who numbered approximately 20,000 in July 1937) were working-class women. The women of Mujeres Libres aimed both to overcome the barriers of ignorance and inexperience which prevented women from participating as equals in the struggle for a better society, and to confront the dominance of men within the anarchist movement itself….