¿Una pequeña revolución sexual? Experiencias de sexualidad y anticoncepción de mujeres andaluzas entre los años cincuenta y ochenta del siglo XX

This article addresses the impact of the official «gender models» of Francoism, linked to the regime’s birth rate promotion and criminalization of contraception, on women’s sexual and reproductive practices. We also analyze how these practices changed in relation to the progressive dismantling of these models during the Democratic Transition. The aim of this article is to explore the subjectivity and diversity of experiences related to sex and birth control reported by women who had lived in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. For this purpose, we conducted 22 oral history interviews in Granada city and in two small towns, one in Cordoba province and the other in Granada province. Based on their accounts, we affirm that prohibition of the sale and dissémination of contraceptive methods was highly ineffective. Regardless of their social class or area of residence, both the women and their partners used various contraceptive techniques and products to space out or limit the number of their children. Tales of premarital sex, the active search of women’s for sexual pleasure, and the somewhat random decision-making on family size, allow us to question the monolithic image of «sexual repression» in Francoist Spain. They also raise questions about micro-negotiations around gender models and anti-contraception legislation in different social settings and in couples with different degrees of mutual understanding and equality. Experiences of urban women, who spoke of pre-marital sexual relations (with or without penetration) and the importance of sexual pleasure, contrast with testimony of sexual violence fromsome older women in a rural environment. While the former lived through their sexual revolution, which took place within a formal and egalitarian relationship, sexuality and pregnancies were a tool of male domination for the latter group.