Anarcha-feminism, also known as anarchist feminism or anarcho-feminism, is a system of analysis which combines the principles and power analysis of anarchist theory with feminism. It closely resembles intersectional feminism. Anarcha-feminism generally posits that patriarchy and traditional gender roles as manifestations of involuntary coercive hierarchy should be replaced by decentralized free association. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class conflict and the anarchist struggle against the state and capitalism. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa. L. Susan Brown claims that "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist".
Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organisation that existed in Spain from 1936 to 1939. Founded by Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada, and Amparo Poch y Gascón as a small women's group in Madrid, it rapidly grew to a national federation of 30,000 members at its height in the summer of 1938.
Lucía Sánchez Saornil (1895–1970), was a Spanish poet and anarcha-feminist activist, best known for co-founding the Mujeres Libres organisation together with Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón. Born into a working-class Madrilenian family, she taught herself from an early age and began writing poems for the burgeoning Futurist and Ultraist movements.
Amparo Poch y Gascón was a Spanish anarchist, pacifist, doctor, and activist in the years leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War. Poch y Gascón was born in Zaragoza.
Josefa Carpena-Amat, known by the pseudonym Pepita Carpeña, was a militant trade unionist, writer, and Spanish anarchist.
Major anarchist thinkers, past and present, have generally supported women's equality. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewing sexual freedom as an expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights. In New York's Greenwich Village, "bohemian" feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for both men and women. In Europe and North America, the free love movement combined ideas revived from utopian socialism with anarchism and feminism to attack the "hypocritical" sexual morality of the Victorian era.
Maria Suceso Portales Casamar was an Extremaduran anarcho-feminist.
Lola (Dolores) Iturbe was a prominent Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, trade unionist, activist, and journalist during the Second Spanish Republic, and a member of the French Resistance during the Battle of France. She co-founded the anarcho-feminist movement, Mujeres Libres, and of the Comité de Milicias Antifascistas during the Spanish Civil War.
Sara Berenguer Laosa (1919–2010) was a Catalan anarcho-syndicalist and anarcha-feminist writer, who was active in the Mujeres Libres movement.
Mercè Comaposada i Guillén was a Catalan pedagogue, lawyer, and anarcho-feminist. With Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Amparo Poch y Gascón, she was the co-founder of the libertarian women's organization, Mujeres Libres.
Isabel Mesa Delgado was a Spanish trade unionist, anarchist and Spanish anarcha-feminist worker. While in hiding, she used the pseudonym Carmen Delgado Palomares.
María Bruguera Pérez was an anarcho-syndicalist who died in Madrid in 1992.
Feminists were involved in the Spanish Civil War, although the conditions underlying their involvement pre-dated the Second Republic.
Women in the Federación Anarquista Ibérica were often only addressed because of what they appeared to be able to offer male FAI leadership in terms of attracting adept fighters and politicians.
Women in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo faced many specific challenges owing to a long history of sex-based discrimination in the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement and in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). From early in its history, there was a belief that a woman's primary role was to reproduce and that only men should be in the workforce. Few women were involved in the early efforts inside Spain, and internationally there were active attempts to keep women out. The formal creation of the CNT in 1910 did little to change this. Anarchist men inside the CNT actively tried to keep women out to avoid diminishing their own importance.
Women in the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War were part of a broad leftist coalition founded ahead of the 1936 Spanish general elections. The Second Spanish Republic represented a changing cultural and political landscape in which women's political organizations could flourish for the first time. It failed to empower women completely, as they were often locked out of governance roles and positions in political organizations. Many organizations continued to discriminate against women, as Marxist ideology did not see them as a unique group with special needs but as part of larger class grouping in which class equality needed to be prioritized.
Soledad Kasilda Hernáez Vargas (1914-1992) was a Basque anarchist militant that fought in the Spanish Civil War. An anarchist from an early age, during the time of the Spanish Republic, she was a prominent participant in the Basque anarchist movement, being imprisoned for her role in the Revolution of 1934. With the outbreak of civil war, she fought within the confederal militias, transferring to the Aragon front after the nationalists won the War in the North. After the Republic's defeat, she went into exile in France, where she supported the French Resistance, Spanish Maquis and eventually ETA.
Concepción Liaño Gil, commonly known as Concha Liaño, was a Spanish anarchist feminist who participated in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and was a founder of the Mujeres Libres movement.
Angustias Lara Sánchez (1917–2003), commonly known as Maruja Lara, was a Spanish anarcha-feminist and syndicalist.
