Introduction
Work-family issues in Spain have changed dramatically over the past thirty years following the Franco regime. During the Franco dictatorship, traditionalism constrained the freedoms of Spanish society, but the end of the regime brought about increased democracy as well as a economic growth which resulted in more women entering the labor market. These changes produced a new set of issues-specifically those regarding the reconciliation of work and family life.
Despite the major movement of women into the labor market, traditional notions of family continue to have a profound impact on women’s roles at home and at work. Minimal public support for working caregivers reflects the larger population's conflicting ideas about women, work, and child-rearing. In response to the shortage of adequate work-family policies, Spain’s families have created private solutions to the problem of balancing care-giving and work responsibilities.
These solutions are based primarily on sex-role preferences and include changing family structures, utilizing kin networks and other forms of substitute care, and private employer-employee arrangements.
This website was created by students at Tulane University during the Fall 2006 semester as part of a collaborative web project for an undergraduate sociology course titled Gender, Work & Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective. We hope that the information provided in this website will give the reader a general overview of the history of as well as current issues in gender, work and family in Spain.
Disclaimer
Although we believe our research to be accurate, we want to emphasize that there were limitations to our research on the topic of gender, work and family issues in Spain. Our undergraduate research for the creation of this website was limited to one semester and we were limited to only English language sources.
Reference:
Carrasco, Cristina and Arantxa Rodriguez. 2000. "Women, Families, and Work in Spain:
Structural Changes and New Demands." Feminist Economics 6(1):45-57.
