16. In the Name of Tradition: Socio-Festive Conflicts for Gender Reasons

Abstract

Many are the years the women of the world have been struggling to obtain recognition of rights and full citizenship in the various areas of society of our countries, cities or towns. The festivals have also been among our battlefields, where the struggle has often been hard and the victory difficult.

Although festivities seem to be social events where spontaneity governs everything, where daily life is suspended to open way to fun, happiness, and enjoyment, this is simply a mirage. These spaces of apparent naturality are also controlled by the dominant actors of every society, usually masculine, who create the codes, both implicit and explicit, that govern these rituals. Nevertheless, women have taken advantage of these spaces, considered in the anthropological and sociological literature as areas of rule transgression, to express our political vindications.

In the present paper, by means of a comparative study based on ethnographic and documentary material, we evidence and analyze two of the most relevant vindications that the women have carried out in the festive Spanish space for the achievement of full right, by making visible their strategies and action areas, but especially by putting the focus in the achievements and advances that their struggles have had on the social and historical development of women.