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Gender Violence And The Empowerment Of Women In Post-Franco Spanish Film, Ashley A. Douthett

Global Honors Theses

This thesis explores the representation of gender violence within post-Franco Spanish film, and how it is indicative of changing attitudes of Spanish society toward the issue since the death of dictator, Francisco Franco. This paper provides a succinct history of gender violence and gender roles within Spanish culture, which were heavily influenced by the Catholic Church and Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1939-1975. During his regime, women were confined to the domestic sphere and often mistreated by their husbands, without any laws or shelters to protect them. Franco maintained a strict censorship on films, in which gender violence was not …