ABSTRACT
In a study carried out between 2001 and 2003, within a EU-funded project on employment and women’s studies (EWSI; results published in Griffin 2002, 2004, 2005; see also this volume, chapters 12 and 14), we analysed the impact of women’s studies training on employment in Spain as perceived and experienced at that particular moment, by means of questionnaires and interviews with women’s studies students. 1 Our background report and final publications (Carrera Suárez and Viñuela Suárez 2002, 2004), like other related analyses of the history of women’s studies in Spain (Birriel Salcedo 2002; Casado Aparicio 2002), foregrounded the rapid developments after Franco’s death in 1975, and the consequences of this growth of the field in a semi-institutionalised setting. Such consequences included a certain degree of freedom in organising curricula, but also a tendency for women’s studies to exist in optional courses or postgraduate studies only and, given the somewhat dubious recognition of the field, to constitute a double shift and a career hindrance for the academics involved. We also found that most full programmes tended to exist as PhD programmes, primarily geared towards academic learning and research or, less frequently, as specialised professional degrees in the form of Títulos propios, a postgraduate category which lacked official status and therefore national and professional validity. Data on courses were not easy to locate, given their positioning outside regular degrees, and the level of institutionalisation of women’s studies and related employment opportunities was very moderate.
