1. Vid. Jo Little: “Feminist Perspectives in Rural Geography: an Introduction,” Journal of Rural Studies 2 (1986): 1–8; van der Burg, Margreet and Endeveld, Marina, eds. Women on Family Farms. Gender Research, EC Policies and New Perspectives (Wageningen, 1994)Google Scholar Circle for Rural European Studies; Wells, Betty L., “Creating a public space for women in US agriculture: Empowerment, Organization and Social Change,” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 371–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Midgley, Jane, “Gendered economies: Transferring private gender roles into the public realm through rural community development,” Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006): 217–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Shaughnessy, Sara and Krogman, Naomi T., “Gender as contradiction: From dichotomies to diversity in natural resource extraction,” Journal of Rural Studies 27 (2011): 134–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. For organizations in rural sectors, vid. Norma Villareal Méndez, “Sectores Campesinos, Mujeres Rurales y Estado en Colombia” (Ph.D. diss., Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2004), 114–538.

3. Elizabeth Teather, “Contesting rurality: country women's social and political networks,” in Gender and Rurality, eds. Sarah Whatmore, Terry Marsden, and Philip Lowe (London, 1994), 31–49.

4. Cfr. Tracey L. Moyle; Maureen Dollard and Saswata Narayan Biswas, “Personal and economic empowerment in rural Indian women: a self-help group approach,” International Journal of Rural Management 2 (2006): 245–66; and Otilia Driga, Esteban Lafuente, and Yancy Vaillant, “Reasons for the Relatively Lower Entrepreneurial Activity Levels of Rural Women in Spain,” Sociologia Ruralis 49 (2009): 71–96.

5. Berit Brandth and Marit S. Haugen, “Breaking into a Masculine Discourse Women and Farm Forestry,” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 427–42; Margaret Altson, “Women's Representation in an Australian Rural Context,” Sociologia Ruralis 43 (2003): 474–87.

6. The establishment of a Secretariat for Women (Secretariado para la Mujer) in 1977 in the Spanish trade union Worker's Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) led to this union becoming the social organization with the largest number of women in management positions and the establishment of a joint Confederal Executive Committee (Comité Ejecutivo Confederal) consisting equally of men and women, vid. Carmen Bravo Sueskun, De la domesticidad a la emancipación. Las mujeres en la sociedad navarra, 1961–1991 (From domesticity to emancipation. Women in society of Navarra, 1961–91), (Pamplona, 2012), 451.

7. While the feminist movement in the cities will be nourished basically of university students, in rural it will do it of peasant women without studies. However, those that at least managed to obtain secondary education will occupy positions of leadership and political and union empowerment within the peasant world, since such training allowed them, together with an in-depth knowledge of agrarian labor reality, to assume functions of management, organization and communication within of the peasant organizations.

8. We followed Antonio Herrera González de Molina, La construcción de la democracia en el campo (1975–1988). El sindicalismo agrario socialista en la Transición española (The construction of democracy in the country (1975–188). The socialist agricultural unionism in the Spanish Transition), (Madrid, 2007), 15.

9. The term “empowerment” was developed in the World Conference on Women held in Beijing (Peking) in 1995 to refer to the increase of participation of women in decision-making processes and access to individual and/or collective power, which has to do with the recovery of the very dignity of women as human beings. However, its origin lies in liberal thinking, linked to the idea of empowering a person, without the more radical connotations taken on by Third World feminist thinking, vid. Michael Peters and James Marshall, “Education and empowerment: Postmodernism and the critique of humanism,” Education and Society 9 (1992): 123–34. Vid. Liv Toril Pettersen and Hilde Solbakken, “Empowerment as a Strategy for Change for Farm Women in Western Industrialized Countries,” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 318–30, to understand the term participation as a precursor of empowerment.

10. The first Secretariat for Women (Secretariado de la Mujer) was established in CCOO in 1977 as a structure to link the trade union and the feminist movement, Bravo-Sueskun, De la domesticidad a la emancipación, 449–50.

11. Brandth and Haugen, “Breaking into a Masculine Discourse Women,” 427–42.

12. Ramón Muñiz de las Cuevas and Prudencia Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller na sociedade agraria galega” (Studies about women in the peasant Galician society), in IV Xornadas Agrarias Galegas A Muller na Agricultura (Sada/A Coruña, 1988), 7–79, held from October 24–26 1986 in the Centro de Ensinanzas Integradas in Ourense.

13. Rosario Regueira Cereijo, “8 de marzo: Día da Muller Traballadora. Problemática da muller en Galicia” (8th March: International Woman's Day: Women's problems in Galicia), Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas-Sindicato Labrego Galego 108 (1987): 10–11.

14. Interview with Lidia Senra, former SGL secretary, August 10, 2010.

15. Vid. Lourdes Benería, “La aparición de la economía feminista” (The emergence of the feminist economy), Historia Agraria 17 (1999): 59–61.

16. Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 21–25. Interview with Pencha Santasmarinas, August 20, 2010.

17. Statements of Nanina Santos, María Xosé Queizán, Fina Varela, Eva Loira, Pencha Santasmarinas, and Lidia Senra, in the documentary Digna Rabia, 2011, directed by Martins Rodríguez and Rodríguez Gallardo.

18. Teresa Ortega López, “Semillas de cambio. Campesinas en el franquismo, la transición y la democracia” (Seeds of changing. Peasants in the francoism, transition and democracy), Andalucía en la historia, 51 (2016): 68–72.

19. Sharon R. Roseman, “Celebrating Silenced Words: The ‘Reimagining’ of a Feminist Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Galicia,” Feminist Studies 23 (1997), 43–71; and Sharon R. Roseman, “¿Quen Manda? (Who's in Charge?): Household Authority Politics in Rural Galicia,” Anthropologica XLI (1999), 117–32.

20. Fix to: Ana María Abraira, “A marxinación da muller labrega” (The exclusion of the peasant woman), Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas-Sindicato Labrego Galego 2: 6–8 (1977). A similar situation in CCOO, Bravo-Sueskun: De la domesticidad a la emancipación, 445–54. The lack of interest of gender power for the forms of male struggle can also be seen in the anthropological perspective adopted in the work of Lila Abu-Lughod, “The romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women,” American Ethnologist 17 (1990): 41–55, when women's “minor” challenges to the restrictions imposed by the male power of Bedouins of the western desert of Egypt (smoking, sexually irreverent speech, resistance to marriage, etc.) are analyzed.

21. Initially, historiographic accounts have wavered between the traditional invisibility of women's social and political activities (as was the case in Galician society in 1975–90) and their consideration as “heroines” to meet the need for creating “myths” that “helped along” agrarian claims.

22. “A loita das enchousas serviu para algo” (The struggle in As Enchousas served a purpose and was successful), Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas-Sindicato Labrego Galego 106 (1987): 10–11; Xosé Manuel Pereiro: “Galicia o la supervivencia del feudalismo rural” (Galicia or the survival of the rural feudalism), El País, November 14, 1986.

23. Ulfe was convicted by the County Court of A Coruña and received a one-month arrest sentence and a fine for the crime of disobedience and resisting authority when trying to avoid being evicted from the land she worked on. She was supported by Comisións Labregas, which led the usual collective actions in that period: fliers, graffiti, manifestos, a sit-in in the bishopric of Ferrol, resistance in the house vs. the Civil Guard, injuries, arrests, prosecutions, bails, duress, awareness-raising in fairs, assaults, etc.

24. Many peasant women who farmed the land leased endured the landowners’ patriarchal violence: prohibition to access the land, abusive payment to reclaim the land, threats, evictions, destruction of houses, loss of personal effects, etc. For these issues, see Carolyn Sachs, Gendered fields: rural women, agriculture and environment (Oxford, 1996); Sandra Hill-Lanz, Women on Farms. A report on women farm workers in the Western Cape (Pretoria, 1994); Sandra Hill-Lanz and Morgan Mitchell, Women on farms: growing stronger. (National Women on Farms Programme, 1997).

25. The literature on the participation of women in social conflicts throughout history is discussed in a continuum, which ranges from empowering women to their absolute dependence on men. There are references in Araceli Freire Cedeira, En defensa de lo suyo. Propiedad forestal y conflictividad social durante el franquismo: los montes vecinales de Cerceda, A Coruña (Defending what was theirs. Forestry ownership and social conflict during Francoism: The communal forests from Cerceda, A Coruña), (Santiago de Compostela, 2011), 96–97.

26. Source: Source: Spanish National Institute of Statistics, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos, http://www.ine.es/inebaseweb/libros.do?tntp=25687). Labor Force Survey.

27. Dolors García Ramón, “Actividad agraria y género en España: una aproximación a partir del Censo Agrario de 1982” (Agricultural activity and gender in Spain: an outline survey on the basis of the 1982 agricultural census), Documents D'Analisi Geogràfica 14 (1989): 89–114.

28. Percentages of the active Spanish population in the agricultural sector. Source: Spanish National Institute of Statistics, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos, http://www.ine.es/inebaseweb/libros.do?tntp=25687).

29. Comission des Communautés Europénnes, 1984, L'emploi des femmes en Espagne, Luxembourg, Office des publications officielles des Communautés Européenes.

30. Percentages of agricultural workforce by gender and region in Spain. Source: Spanish National Institute of Statistics, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE, Fondo documental, Anuarios estadísticos, http://www.ine.es/inebaseweb/libros.do?tntp=25687).

31. Redclift, N. and Mingione, E., eds., Beyond Employment; Household, Gender and Subsistence (Chichester, UK, 1985).

32. To understand the complexities of this process, it is important to bear in mind the words of Sharon R. Roseman “Strong Women and Pretty Girls: Self-Provisioning, Gender, and Class Identity in Rural Galicia (Spain),” American Anthropologist 104: 22–37 (2002) on the fact that the feminisation of the agricultural sector implied women dedicating their time not only to paid farm work but also to other tasks that were largely unpaid but necessary for their family's survival.

33. Istituto Nazionale di Statistica. ISTAT- Censimento agricoltura.

34. Ángel Rodríguez Gallardo, “Mujeres en prisión durante la dictadura portuguesa” (Women in prison during the Portuguese dictatorship), Studia histórica. Historia contemporánea 29 (2011): 337–66; Rose Nery Nobre de Melo, Mulheres portuguesas na Resistência (Portuguese Women in the Resistance) (Seara Nova, 1975); Vanda Gorjâo and Mulheres em Tempos Sombrios, Oposiçao feminina no Estado Novo (Women in Dark Times. Female Opposition in the Estado Novo) (Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2002); António de Figueiredo, Cinquenta Anos de Ditadura (Fifty Years of Dictatorship) (Dom Quixote, 1976).

35. Portuguese women with secondary studies were allowed to vote since 1931.

36. Bravo-Sueskun, De la domesticidad a la emancipación, 421–549. When talking about feminine discourse patterns, we refer to discursive strategies of resistance against patriarchy.

37. Something similar has been found in certain rural communities in Australia, vid. Bárbara Pini, “A critique ‘new’ rural local governance: The case of gender in a rural Australian setting,” Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006): 396–408. On the invisibility of women see Margaret Grace and June Lennie, “Constructing and reconstructing rural women in Australia: The politics of change, diversity and identity,” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 351–70. In Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 33, the men surveyed recognize that only women with sufficient qualification should participate in public affairs. The impossibility of solidifying their identity and participating in socio-political tasks is one of the characteristic features of the struggle for the emancipation of Galician women, and of many other realities.

38. More accurate data in Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 48–49.

39. Ibid., 11.

40. Berit Brandth and Marit S. Haugen, “Rural Women, Feminism and the Politics of Identity,” Sociologia Ruralis 37 (1997): 325–44; Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 19. On the contradictions of the media in that period, which maintained the traditional roles but at the same time included adverts encouraging the emancipation of women, vid. Bravo-Sueskun, De la domesticidad a la emancipación, 25.

41. Tareixa Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez. A historia dun liderado entrañable (Lidia Senra Rodríguez: The history of an endearing leadership) (Santiago de Compostela, 2010), 59.

42. Pamela Beth Radcliff, “Women’s Politics: Consumer Riots in Twentieth-Century Spain,” in Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain, eds. VL Enders and PB Radcliff (Albany, NY, 1999), 301–324.

43. Vid. Ramón Villares, La propiedad de la tierra en Galicia, 1500–1936 (Land ownership in Galicia, 1500–1936), (Madrid, 1982); Miguel Cabo Villaverde, O agrarismo (The agrarianism) (Vigo, 1998); Carlos Velasco, O agrarismo galego (The Galician agrarianism) (Santiago de Compostela, 2002).

44. For some references of Galician peasant women who were prominent in the collective actions led by the before Civil War of 1936–39 land-reform movement, Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 52–55, and for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, vid. Herminia Pernas Oroza, Historia das mulleres en Galicia. Época contemporánea (History of women in Galicia. Contemporary times) (Baiona, 2011), 180–224.

45. About this conflict, see Ana Cabana and Daniel Lanero, “Movilización social en la Galicia rural del Tardofranquismo (1960–1977)” (Social movements in the rural Galicia during late Francoism), Historia Agraria 48 (2009), 111–32, and the references included therein.

46. Men used to go out to bars, trade fairs and parish meetings, where women used to nearly always be absent, preventing their involvement in any community committee. It was the man who usually registered for the Rural Social Security and farmers insurance and dealt with Banks and the City Council, vid. Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 58–60.

47. Katy Bennett, “A Time for Change? Patriarchy, the Former Coalfields and Family Farming,” Sociologia Ruralis 44 (2004): 147–66.

48. Mª Victoria Martins Rodríguez and Ángel Rodríguez Gallardo, Digna Rabia/Honourable Rage (Asociación Memoria Histórica do 36 de Ponteareas/Unidade de Igualdade da Universidade de Vigo, 2011).

49. Xosé Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos diante da loita de liberación nacional (Galician peasants in the face of national liberation) (A Coruña, 1979), 17; Alberto Sabio Alcutén, “Cultivadores de democracia. Politización campesina y sindicalismo agrario progresista en España, 1970–1980” (Growers of democracy. Peasants’ politicization and progressive agricultural trade unionism in Spain 1970–1980), Historia Agraria 38 (2006): 75–102.

50. Freire Cedeira, En defensa de lo suyo, 75–91.

51. Fouce. Voceiro do Sindicato Labrego Galego/Comisións Labregas 117, 15; Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 17.

52. Sabio Alcutén, “Cultivadores de democracia” 79–80. The involvement of progressive Church members in the development of peasant organizations is also common in Latin America, vid. Emma Siliprandi, “Mulheres agricultoras no Brasil: sujeitos políticos na luta por soberania e segurança alimentar” (Peasant women in Brasil: political subjects in the fight for food Sovereignty and security), Pensamiento Iberoamericano 9 (2011): 170–83. Cabana and Lanero, “Movilización social,” 117, talk about the recognition within rural communities towards individual priests (Ramón Valcarce in Culleredo; Leopoldo López Rego in Melide) and some Agricultural Extension workers such as Ramón Muñiz. We should also mention the case of Prudencia (Pencha) Santasmarinas, an agent for the Agricultural Extension Service in the county of Viveiro and supporter of Comisións Labregas.

53. Sabio Alcutén, “Cultivadores de democracia,” 80.

54. Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 17.

55. The following year a proposal of basic measures for the farming world entitled “Our Farming Agenda” (O noso programa agrario) was made public. It was disseminated through clandestine distribution channels.

56. Comisións Campesiñas (Farm Workers Committees), Comisións Labregas (Peasants Commissions), Sindicato Agrario Galego (Galician Farming Trade Union), and Sindicato Independiente Labrego Galego (Galician Independent Peasants Trade Union).

57. Vid. Cabana and Lanero, “Movilización social.” The roadmap of the demands can be followed in Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas de Galicia 122: 6–9. The first collective non-payments took place in Ourense and Lugo in 1972. Protests became increasingly tense in the following years, with government pressure to block the accounts of those who refused to pay. Comisións Labregas started demonstrating blocking roads with their tractors (tractoradas) as a collective action to put pressure on the government, occupying public institutions and sit-ins in religious buildings. There were clashes and arrests, and protesters were injured. CCLL tried to prevent embargoes to peasants, and it became the best-known trade union among peasant women in that period, vid. Muñiz de las Cuevas and Santasmarinas Raposo, “Estudio sobre a muller,” 61.

58. In Lema (Carballo, A Coruña), the wetland of Baldaio was extremely valuable in terms of shellfish and environmental resources. Part of the communal property was used by the company Baldayo, S.A., supported by the Franco regime, for the extraction of sand (1948–67), taken up again since 1971 with protection of the law enforcement agencies and the prohibition to walk on the beach and the wetland, or to gather shellfish.

59. Dams were constructed in Galicia, ensuing to the following conflicts: Castrelos de Miño (1968), Portodemouros (1968), Frieira (1969), Salas (1972), Albarellos (1972) and Barrié de la Maza (1973), vid. Cabana and Lanero, “Movilización social,” 121.

60. Protests against pulp plants took place during late Francoism and the early years of democracy. The pulp plant in Ponteceso was a project of Celulosas de Guipúzcoa to settle in Bergantiños. The project was not carried out due to the opposition of the communities involved, vid. ABC, 2/3/1976; El País, 21/12/1976; La Voz de Galicia, 5/6/2008. Other villages that protested against pulp plants in that period were Quiroga, Ourense, O Barco de Valdeorras, Ponteareas or Negreira, vid. El País, August 12, 1976.

61. Sabio Alcutén, “Cultivadores de democracia,” 80. The so-called “milk agreement” was used to negotiate prize, transport, quality control, production, and payment of milk.

62. Villareal Méndez, Sectores campesinos, op. cit. The “feminization of agriculture” was an expression that became popular with the analysis of the trend of data from 1950 to 1990 from the World Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

63. The conflict began in 1973 and went on until the Socialists came to power in 1982, with peaks of protest in 1977 and 1979, vid. El Progreso, March 18, 2011.

64. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 56–57.

65. This idea of the women defending “what was theirs” is discussed in Freire Cedeira, En defensa de lo suyo, 96–144.

66. Villareal Méndez, Sectores campesinos, 19; Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 57.

67. On a comparison of Pencha Santasmarinas as a “woman of action” with the German environmental leader Petra Kelly, vid. El Correo Gallego, October 14, 2007, where the main highlights of her biography can be found.

68. El Progreso, March 18, 2011.

69. The Asociación Sementeira, an organization bringing together several people from clandestine organizations, was very important in the conflict. It was led by Pencha Santasmarinas, vid. El Correo Gallego, October 14, 2007 and El Progreso, March 18, 2011.

70. Other women who led those protests (África Leira Sanmartín, of the Agricultural Extension Service; or the peasants Josefa Domínguez Meitín and Antonia Galdo Fernández) have remained hidden under the male prominence, vid. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 57.

71. Vid. Martins Rodríguez and Rodríguez Gallardo, Digna Rabia.

72. El Progreso, October 14, 2007. Together with Ramón Muñiz de las Cuevas, they developed a new mental environment which encouraged the riots against the nuclear plant in Xove,” El País de Galicia, March 18, 2011.

73. Ledo Regal: Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 57–62.

74. Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro: CineClubeCarlosVarela 1945–1980. Nós, P.C.G/Fundación Bautista Álvarez, 2005. The transformation in connection with the incorporation of women to history explains that Oliva Pose, one of the leaders of the protest movement in the wetland of Baldaio has become a reference in the electronic publication As mulleres na Historia. Álbum de Mulleres (2005) (Women in History. Women's Album), kept active by the Equality Committee of the Consello da Cultura Galega (Galician Culture Council), www.culturagalega.org/album/.

75. Henrique Mariño, “Cuando la guardia civil cargaba con mosquetón” (When the Civil Guard charged with muskets), Solución Salina, June 15, 2012, www.publico.es.

76. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 60; Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 147.

77. Xosé Vilela, “Baldaio. O sangue chegou ó mar” (Baldaio. Blood  reached the river), Teima (22nd May 1977). The symbolic occupation of the sandy area is led by Olivia Pose and Xan Fraga, “Salvemos as marismas de Baldaio!” (Let's save the wetland of Baldaio!), Cadernos A Nosa Terra de pensamento e debate (23d July 1997); Margarita Ledo Andión, “Baldaio. Agora a represión cóntase por millóns” (Baldaio. Now repression is counted in the millions), A Nosa Terra 65 (June 1979), 3.

78. These included the teacher Aurora Platas. Oliva Pose was attacked by law enforcement officers and ended up admitted to hospital in A Coruña.

79. “Cando a historia das Encrobas se comenzou a escribir nos xornais. Un fito do agrarismo que cumpre 30 anos” (When the events of Encrobas started to be told by newspapers. A landmark of the agrarian reform movement), www.vello.vieiros.com, February 14, 2007; Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 67–134; Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 65.

80. Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 95.

81. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 64–65.

82. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 66.

83. Fernández Roupar, Os labregos galegos, 110.

84. Kritzinger, Andrienetta and Vorster, Jan, “Women on South African Farms: Empowerment Across or Along Race and Class Divisions?” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 331–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. In the Second National Congress of the SLG held in 1984, Lidia Senra Rodríguez (twenty-five years old, from Lugo, union officer), as Secretary for Organization and Finance, and María Xesús Iglesias Rodríguez (aged twenty-six, from Moaña, horticulturist), join the National Board of the trade union. There have been a certain “specialization” pin tasks concerning organization, finance, and treasury in connection with the performance of women in community organizations.

86. In 1977, she was appointed Head of Comisións Labregas-Sindicato Labrego Galego in Val de Lemos (Lugo), when she was nineteen years old. In 1984, she became the Secretary for Finance of the SLG, vid. Ledo Regal, Lidia Senra Rodríguez, 72–76.

87. “Hoxe unha médica fálanos das enfermedades da muller” (Today, a woman doctor talked about the illnesses specific to women), Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas de Galicia, special issue.

88. These women include the teacher Araceli Pillado Salgado—dedicated to sheep farming and current Chair of OVICA, the Sheep and Goat Farmers Association—and the doctor Andrea Gallego.

89. “A muller labrega” (The peasant woman), Fouce. Voceiro das Comisións Labregas de Galicia, special issue for the SLG Third Congress (1989).