International Participation of Women in the Spanish Civil War: Conceptions and Practices of Female Participation in the Interwar Period

The participation of volunteers from other countries during wars is not a new phenomenon in history: In wars of the 19th/20th century, women from abroad took on various functions alongside men, of which the traditional ones such as nursing are remembered above all. Beyond these traditional gender stereotypes, however, the voluntary participation of women in armed conflicts has been studied surprisingly rarely. In the project, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) serves as an example: In the ideological conflicts between communism vs. anti-communism and fascism vs. anti-fascism, women were able to re-locate themselves in a hitherto unknown way and thus open up new fields of action and roles for themselves in the events of the war. It is thus possible to trace the rapid change in gender relations and roles in the interwar period against the background of radical ideological, warlike and pacifist confrontations. The Spanish Civil War is understood in the project as a space in which both the involvement of women (and men)in Spain itself and the reception or judgement of this involvement by the participants themselves and their spaces of origin are negotiated.

The project thus not only contributes to gender history, but also opens up a new perspective on war as a space of negotiation participation processes.