The Divergent Aims of the Struggle for Women's Suffrage in Spain (1918-1924)

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why groups of women working for women’s suffrage in Spain from 1918 to 1924 failed to agree on a unified strategy. It focuses on three of the most important groups working for the right of women to vote in Spain: the Women’s Socialist Group, the Catholic Workers’ Trade Union of the Immaculate Conception and the Crusade of Spanish Women, a suffragist group. All three groups were united by the development of strategies which contested male-dominated discourses and spaces in the public sphere, but were ultimately divided by their aims. Their ideological incompatibilities explain why these groups were unable to agree on a common strategy and why the campaign in support of the vote for women failed.