Blackwell Reference Online

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Amparo Poch y Gascón was a Spanish anarchist doctor, fighter for women's rights, and, in 1936, a co-founder of the Mujeres Libres organization (the “Free Women”). A brilliant student, she focused her energies in medicine on child care (especially the reduction of infant mortality) and health services for the working class. She was a ceaseless advocate of the equality of the sexes and a tireless campaigner for free love, sexual education, and “conscious motherhood” (birth control), publishing widely on these topics in the anarchist press, including the monograph La vida sexual de la mujer ( The Sexual Life of Women , 1932). At the same time, her feminist vision conceived of women as independent and autonomous beings different from men, emphasizing a foundational and maternal nature. Poch y Gascón apparently joined the anarchosyndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Labor Confederation, CNT) during the Republican period; unlike the other founders of Mujeres Libres, she was associated with the more moderate “Treintista” faction who were expelled and only readmitted to the CNT in 1936. A member of the Red Cross and of international anti-war and pacifist organizations during the Spanish Civil War, she was appointed by Federica Montseny to be the director of services in the ministry of health and social services. In this position she worked in refugee centers ... log in or subscribe to read full text