The History of Women's Militancy in the Spanish Civil War

Jessica McKeiver is a PhD researcher focusing on photographic narratives of women's militancy in the 20th century Ireland and Spain. Was there a precedent within Spanish culture for these women to join militia units and take a more active role in combat? Were women at the front or at the barricades maybe during earlier worker strikes and revolutionary activities or was what happened in 1936 a new phenomenon? It's a really interesting question and I'm just going to break it down into two. The first bit is talking about precedents because it's really interesting when we look up for public and propaganda, there was this real effort to actually create this idea of a legacy of female militancy.