The postgraduate campus of the University of Navarra served as the stage for the final point of the first graduating class of the Master's Degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture. A degree that this University launched two years ago and that is a complete and interesting journey through history, philosophy, theology and thought.
– Supernatural woman was the central theme of the last session of this course and was given by Inmaculada Alva, historian, who talked to Omnes about women, feminism, society and culture.
We cannot deny that, in recent years, there has been progress in women's rights, but there also emerges a certain disenchantment with this "equalizing the bad". What have we gained and what have we lost in this path of advancing rights?
-These political and social advances took off in the second half of the 20th century. I think we have gained a lot, not with masculinization, but with feminism. Or rather, with feminisms. I like to speak in the plural because it seems to me that there is such a variety that none of them can arrogate to themselves the hegemony of saying 'I am the true feminism'.
Actually, when we speak of the "situation of women in the past" we are referring to a specific situation: that of the bourgeois woman of the 19th century. Bourgeois because in other environments, women have always worked outside the home or in family businesses. The bourgeois idea to which we refer was the "devoted mother", the "obedient daughter", who was subordinate to the man and who had no other aspirations than marriage and little else. Indeed, there were certainly many women who were happy with the life they had: taking care of their house, their husband..., but there was another reality of many other women who wanted to develop their own dreams, to live their life in a different way, even to marry someone else or to make work and family compatible. And it was something that was not possible, because in this bourgeois conception of the nineteenth century, the role of women was developed at home, with the children. It is true that there is a greater tendency in women than in men towards the creation of a home. But women have many more capabilities.
For many women, marriage, the bourgeois way of life developed in the nineteenth century and lived in the twentieth century, could become a trap, even a grave. This is what Simone De Beauvoir, for example, denounced. I very much disagree with many of De Beauvoir's things, but when she refers to the trap of marriage, in a certain sense, I think she is right.
From the second half of the 20th century, women began to change this idea and feminisms were born. Just as I like to speak of feminisms in the plural, I prefer to speak of women in the plural. Women participate in a more active way in society, also in politics, in the profession, because they also have a lot to say. I believe that, in this sense, we have won.
Could we then be able to concretize these advances?
-Progress has been made in the conception of the family as a task that does not belong only to women. It is now common a model of family co-responsible, in which both the mother and the father are responsible for education, care and love. Making a family between the two of them. And there is no single way, each family, each marriage will have to see how to make a family, but it is up to both of them.
Another idea born with feminisms that I think is interesting is to be aware of things like taking the blame away from women in cases of harassment, violence, etc. In other words, that phrase of blaming, why would she wear that skirt? Why would she go into that apartment? And it is not like that. It is true that women have to be aware of their responsibility, they have to be responsible for their sexuality. But it is the fault of the one who does not control herself.
As noted above, not everything is positive. Do you think we have lost something along the way?
-The answer to this question depends on the feminism we are talking about. We could say that there is a hegemonic feminism. It is the one that appears in the media or in certain policies and in which we have lost harmony. The role of women in the home has been devalued, not in the bourgeois sense that we were talking about, but the fact that the home is a space for personal fulfillment. With this type of hegemonic feminism, it is thought that dedication to the family degrades women, or that if they do not work outside the home, they are lesser. What we have been offered is a masculinization of women. Basically, this type of hegemonic feminism, in my opinion, is not a true feminism since the model it takes is the male model. They have masculinized women.
I think that women have a way of working that is more collaborative than hierarchical, but today, if you want to advance in the world of business, either you behave like a man or you don't go up, and it is the task of feminism to have the ambition to change society so that other, more collaborative ways of working are also imposed, so that women are also more balanced.
We are seeing certain feminist "rewritings" of history, does this make sense, and isn't it unfair to those women who were really pioneers?
-My work consists, precisely, in making women's history. What I see is that, on occasions, this rewriting of history that is done with current categories is not only unfair but also false. You have to go to the documents.
When the cinema, for example, presents us with women, such as Isabella of Castile, playing roles that are not real, it is not so much that they were not possible at the time, but rather that they were not possible in those times.
Therefore, it is unfair to those other women who were indeed like that. It is these real stories that must be sought out and given visibility.
It is important to make a history in which men and women occupy their rightful space.
I think of a Maria de Molina, Queen of Castile, three times regent, having to keep the kingdom of Castile to ensure the rights for her son and then for her grandson. And she succeeded. Or I think of Margaret of Austria, governor of the Netherlands, who managed to make her period of government a period of relative peace. These women should be mentioned because they are real and there are the documents.
When we go down to historical reality we find thousands of women doing things. Until the 19th century, for example, the concept of work was family-based. The workshop, the workshop or whatever it was, was run by the husband and the wife. That's why there were so many "widows" who ran the husband's business. I have had the good fortune to have in my hands some sales documents of a woman, a widow, with a commercial emporium in Manila, who wrote to her commercial intermediaries in Europe, in Mexico. However, I once saw a film in which Urraca was put in the mouth of a completely masculine, even coarse, manner of speaking. Urraca would have a lot of character for sure, but she wouldn't talk that way and she didn't need it to assert herself.
Have women achieved everything or is there a challenge still pending?
-These questions are always very difficult for me to answer. It's like when you are asked what your favorite book is. I think there are several challenges, also depending on the contexts of women today, which are very different. Believe it or not, I think that, deep down, society is still a very masculinized society, sometimes because of those hegemonic feminisms that do not look at the real woman. The challenge for women today is to develop in this society all that they, by their nature, bring to the table: empathy, collaboration, dialogue and communication.
