Spanish Civil War Interview Series 11: Gender Violence in the Spanish Civil War with Charlotte Walmsley
History of the Second World War
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The Short Period of Women on the Front Line
In 1936 there's never a targeted call for women to join the front lines, but what you have is a spontaneous sort of movement. You do have women coming forward and going to the front to fight - which is quite remarkable in this context. But by 1937 they were very quickly shifted away from that kind of valorisation because of concerns about sex on the front lines. And then it was also gendered anxiety around women carrying guns and fighting at the front in French warfare. It wasn't across the left that ever in 1936 when women were fighting on the front line, that all of the leftist parties were protest.
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