Welfare State in Postwar Europe Essay

Complicating matters in Spain was the duty to the State that the Franco regime saw as a natural extension of these Catholic (and admittedly pan-Western) traditional beliefs of gender roles and the proper actions and attitudes for women to hold. At times, this belief and the demands that it placed on Catholic women in both Italy and Spain were in conflict with other expectations placed on them by the family and the Church. In her book True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco's Spain, Aurora G. Morcillo asserts that "the language and true nature of Catholic womanhood was not fixed," and that the women of Spain (and by extension Italy) had to navigate an increasingly complex world of often conflicting demands while largely attempting to retain their traditional Catholic identities.This is not to suggest that women quietly accepted traditional limitations in the period of prosperity following the war. Rather, the negotiation between both traditional and new expectations and expanding opportunities resulted in a redefining of the Catholic woman in these two countries, which in turn had a formative effect on society. Properly raising children to be productive members of the new society -- arguably the prime role of the Spanish and Italian Catholic mothers -- required increased engagement with the outside world. The women of this time and place were both shaped by and helped to shape the postwar societies of which….....