The 'merciful and loving sex': Concepci ón Arenal's narratives on Spanish Red Cross women's war relief work in the 1870s.

This article examines the humanitarian work of Spanish women throughout this period through the intervention of the SRC ladies' sections, especially the central one. It reveals that these women played a crucial role in organizing, deploying and sustaining its humanitarian relief to the combatants. They empowered themselves by taking advantage of, and contributing to, the spreading of a view of women - very common at the time - as having a specific gender 'instinct' that made them 'naturally' suited to charitable and compassionate tasks. Pacifism is present in the humanitarian views and practices of these women, particularly in the case of Concepción Arenal (1820-1893), a social reformer, lawyer and writer, who was fully involved with the SRC during the Carlist war. PMID: 31665923 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Medicine, Conflict and Survival - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Med Confl Surviv Source Type: research