This book explores the evolution of Spanish feminism in the context of European feminisms and institutions from the 1960s to recent times. Beginning with Sección Femenina, the official Francoist women's organization, Feminism, National Identity and European Integration in Modern Spain traces the interplay between Spanish women's policy and international policymaking. In some cases, as with the Sección Femenina-championed Law of Political Rights (Ley de Derechos) in 1961, Spanish women's policy at least appeared more progressive than what Western democracies offered – notable at a time when Spain was considered backward. After Franco's death in 1975, Spain's democratic transition seemingly consolidated forward-thinking women's policy with a Constitution that guaranteed equality of the sexes in 1978, and with the creation of a national bureau charged with crafting women's policy, the Instituto de la Mujer (Women's Institute), in 1983. Yet feminists found themselves marginalized in Spanish political decision-making, as Kathryn L. Mahaney argues so successfully in this study. Mahaney reveals that women ultimately influenced domestic policy not by acting within national networks but by leveraging European connections, particularly after Spain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986. The book shows that Spanish feminists worked through the EEC to gain international approval of policies that had met domestic opposition, and did so by representing them as necessary litmus tests of nations' democratic integrity. Their proposals were shaped by the specific context of Spanish feminism, but also by Spanish debates about what rights democracies should grant women and what equality in a post-fascist nation should encompass. This ground-breaking study explains that, in turn, these processes shaped both Spain's and the European Union's much-prized self-identities as democratic communities.

This book explores the evolution of Spanish feminism in the context of European feminisms and institutions from the 1960s to recent times. Beginning with Sección Femenina, the official Francoist women's organization, Feminism, National Identity and European Integration in Modern Spain traces the interplay between Spanish women's policy and international policymaking. In some cases, as with the Sección Femenina-championed Law of Political Rights (Ley de Derechos) in 1961, Spanish women's policy at least appeared more progressive than what Western democracies offered – notable at a time when Spain was considered backward. After Franco's death in 1975, Spain's democratic transition seemingly consolidated forward-thinking women's policy with a Constitution that guaranteed equality of the sexes in 1978, and with the creation of a national bureau charged with crafting women's policy, the Instituto de la Mujer (Women's Institute), in 1983. Yet feminists found themselves marginalized in Spanish political decision-making, as Kathryn L. Mahaney argues so successfully in this study. Mahaney reveals that women ultimately influenced domestic policy not by acting within national networks but by leveraging European connections, particularly after Spain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986. The book shows that Spanish feminists worked through the EEC to gain international approval of policies that had met domestic opposition, and did so by representing them as necessary litmus tests of nations' democratic integrity. Their proposals were shaped by the specific context of Spanish feminism, but also by Spanish debates about what rights democracies should grant women and what equality in a post-fascist nation should encompass. This ground-breaking study explains that, in turn, these processes shaped both Spain's and the European Union's much-prized self-identities as democratic communities.

In May 2004, after bringing their legislation into accordance with EU regulations, ten more countries joined the European Union. The contributors to this volume assess the impact of this historical development on gender relations in the new and old EU member states. Instead of focusing on either western or eastern Europe, this book investigates the similarities and differences in diverse parts of Europe. Although initially limited, gender equality was part of the original framework of the European Union, an organization often more open than national governments to feminist demands, as this volume illustrates with case studies from eastern and western Europe. The enlargement process thus provides some important policy instruments for increasing equality between men and women.

In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values – the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?

Majismo, a cultural phenomenon that embodied the popular aesthetic in Spain from the second half of the eighteenth century, served as a vehicle to “regain” Spanish heritage. As expressed in visual representations of popular types participating in traditional customs and wearing garments viewed as historically Spanish, majismo conferred on Spanish “citizens” the pictorial ideal of a shared national character. In Framing Majismo, Tara Zanardi explores nobles’ fascination with and appropriation of the practices and types associated with majismo, as well as how this connection cultivated the formation of an elite Spanish identity in the late 1700s and aided the Bourbons’ objective to fashion themselves as the legitimate rulers of Spain. In particular, the book considers artistic and literary representations of the majo and the maja, purportedly native types who embodied and performed uniquely Spanish characteristics. Such visual examples of majismo emerge as critical and contentious sites for navigating eighteenth-century conceptions of gender, national character, and noble identity. Zanardi also examines how these bodies were contrasted with those regarded as “foreign,” finding that “foreign” and “national” bodies were frequently described and depicted in similar ways. She isolates and uncovers the nuances of bodily representation, ultimately showing how the body and the emergent nation were mutually constructed at a critical historical moment for both.

Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its “free market” strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country’s poor, including women’s groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women’s participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women’s activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and “unfinished” cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women’s community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist “issue networks” in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.

"Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences"--