Federica Montseny (1905-1994), writer, leader of the Confederación
Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI),dedicated her life to the fight for women's rights and emancipation. In
1936, in the midst of the civil war, her commitment led her to assume
responsibility for the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance in the
anti-fascist unity government led by the socialist Largo Caballero, the
first female minister in history. A difficult and controversial position
for an anarchist militant, from which, although hindered by the
Stalinists and bourgeois parties, she promoted the creation of
counseling centers and shelters for minors, new regulations for the
protection of disabled people and on prostitution and the first bill on
abortion.
Here we propose an article of hers that appeared ten years earlier, in
1926, in «La Revista Blanca», a libertarian periodical from whose
columns she supported her battle for women's liberation from the slavery
of capitalism and patriarchy.
The woman, to use a collective term, goes through two periods of
historical transition.
One is that of the human being, the other that of the woman. That is,
within the species and sex to which she belongs. As a human being, she
suffers the restlessness and doubt of a world without a compass, that
has lost its way or has only begun it with hesitation. As a woman, she
emerges from moral and religious slavery and begins a new era: that of
equal rights and freedom for both sexes, for life as a whole.[...]
It will be necessary for us, aware of our rights and duties, women happy
and proud of our sex, to make the voice of serenity and balance
resonate[...].
We must have a higher and more elevated concept of ourselves and we must
have a higher aspiration than that of emulating and imitating the other
sex. We must not be satisfied with all the rights that men have. We must
aspire, with indomitable will, to all the rights that they should have.
To aspire to them collectively, to fight for a general freedom and
right: this is the fruitful work, the work that will be accomplished
when the path is followed with a sure step.[...]
We must aspire to absolute freedom, to absolute equality, to absolute
right. We must aspire to them as women and as human beings.[...]
Then from the best elements of the raw material that is the woman of our
days will be forged the ideal type of the woman of the future.
A woman-woman, not a woman-man, not a woman-female.
A woman-woman, not a creature without personality or sex.
A proud and self-confident woman, fully aware that in her reside the
destinies and the future of the human species.
A woman who is a creator of men and not an imitator of them; a woman who
knows how to represent her sex and the entire human species; who
possesses her own strong individuality, a great moral strength, daughter
of the certain and serene awareness that she has of herself and of the
trust that her ability, her serenity, her dignity can inspire at an
individual and collective level.
A woman who in her balance, in her health, mother of moral and physical
beauty, in her intelligence, in her will, in her life, possesses all the
balance, all the health and beauty, all the intelligence, all the will,
all the life of the human species.
A woman who lives her life as a woman, a lover and a mother with full
security and full awareness; who knows how to be herself always, with an
unmistakable imprint, with a vigorous and free individual life, full of
moral energy, of physical harmony.
In her, in this new woman, still unknown or only outlined, lies the future.
Excerpt from Federica Montseny, The New Woman, «La Revista Blanca», n.
72, 15 May 1926.
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