Women in the work site. the visibilization of the agrarian workers during francoism through the census of rural women (1959)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the limits and the possibilities of a source of nationaldimension that interests to specialists on social and economic history of the central decades of thetwentieth century. The Census of Rural Women, what was made by the “Junta Nacional de Labradoresy Ganaderos” at the end of 1959, is little or nothing known. The source, as we will try to expose, hasa huge value. On the one hand, the Census of Rural Women refers to the totality of provinces andmost of the Spanish villages, what raises its grade of interest. On the other hand, it allows us to obtainan unknown social radiography of the Spanish rural world. For the first time, a source counts thework of the rural women in a context conditioned by traditional agriculture, a silenced and invisiblework until recent dates. Focusing our study on eastern Andalucía, we will show through this Censusa reality well known but little reflected in the official statistics composed by public authorities: theintensive participation of women in agricultural works, mainly in the context of a familiar economyfor self-consumption.