The women’s destiny. The legitimization of violence against women through the spanish dictatorship tabloids

Abstract

The Franco prescription about women and her tasks as mothers and wives was helped by the tabloids. While the state passed laws which prevented women from working; the Church imposed its moral precepts and the education segregated curricula for girls. In turn, the sexual difference theory was transferred by media to the public. Women were used as the key element of their social and economic policy and although over the time women’s life changed, essentialist discourse on the "feminine condition" remained intact. El Caso, the most successful weekly tabloid during the dictatorship, points us how the image of women, their roles and gender relationships, was used in that strategic way, through the news of “passion crimes”.