ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores how Catholic traditionalists conceptualized the western feminist movement in relation to its understanding of the decline of the Spanish nation, followed by a discussion of Catholic responses to the proposal of women’s higher education. It analyzes the ideas about women’s nature that underlay Catholics approaches to their education and the role that medico-scientific ideas came to play in these. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Catholic Church in Spain became increasingly interested in the cuestion femenina. Traditional Catholic thinkers who addressed the cuestion femenina were interested in women’s bodies and minds. Medical and scientific ideas occupied a complex role in early twentieth-century neo-Catholic approaches to the question of women’s emancipation. The regenerationist spirit of the beginning of the twentieth century converged with the spread of eugenic ideas. Eugenic considerations in approaches to women’s education were influenced by the nature of eugenic thought in Spain.
