Altered Visual Representations of Women During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

The Spanish Civil War brought about drastic changes in gender roles in Spanish society, which was otherwise highly segregated. In response to the war, Republican women from all walks of life took on roles and responsibilities in the “public sphere,” working alongside male citizens. This article draws on a large corpus of visual imagery to gauge how Republican women were depicted in print media, from earlier representations in traditional gender roles to depictions of a masculinized body and mind during the Civil War. The resources used to infer these transformative changes in women’s representation in Spanish society primarily include photographs, posters, sketches, and pamphlets. They have been sourced from the book The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas, the Museo de Reina Sofia in Madrid collections, the ALB Archives online, and similar institutional archives. The research article seeks to answer the question: Can visual imagery produced during the war period reveal a break from gender disciplining? For this, the selected imagery is analyzed using three main theories: Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Foucault’s idea of identity formation, and Landes’s role of imagery in the construction of a new society.