El modelo de mujer formado en los colegios religiosos

Abstract

Throughout our recent history, the education of the majority of the Spanish women, due to a series of cultural, political circumstances and traditions, was held by the Catholic Church. As a consequence, the model of Christian woman which remained in the Spanish culture up to the second half of the 20th century, was created, transmitted and promoted to a great extent by the religious colleges. The Catholic Church had as feminine model a type of woman who was inspired in the traditional figure of the Virgin Mary, according to which the woman had to be honest, laborious and pious. Her familiar status was considered to be determinant and to a certain extent inmovable and her social and individual role was defined not in personal terms but in relation to the man. This one was probably one of the reasons for which the innovative schools of thought coming from the rest of Europe took long in taking root in our country.

In spite of that, when the new times forced to delve into women’s education, due to the social requirements derived from the schools of thought brought by the modernity, these centers of education were also capable of evolving and adapting, always loyal to their ideology, to the new circumstances.
Their influence and interest resides fundamentally in the fact that they educated numerous generations of women, creating a prototype that got established and remained solidly in society and that was transmitted across generations, determining and influencing the prevailing thought.