Glass ceilings: Winning the vote for women with opposition from a surprising source

The UK has Emmiline Pankhurst, Spain has Clara Campoamor when it comes to women’s suffrage icons.

Born in Madrid, Campoamor was one of the first women to enter the Spanish Parliament and had a long history of feminism and the fight for universal suffrage.

During the 1931 elections, women could not vote, but they could run for deputies. Campoamor and her lawyer colleague Victoria Kent were the only two women elected.

Her work on the Constitutional Committee helped enshrine the principle that women had the same rights as men in the Spanish Constitution of 1931, with flagrant disagreement.

Kent, born in Malaga, as a member of the Radical Socialist Republican Party, felt it was too early to allow women to vote.

Far-left thinking at the time was that women tended to be too conservative and slaves to the Catholic Church, so they would most likely vote for the right.

Campoamor, a member of the Radical Party, saw it as a human rights issue and was instrumental in achieving women’s suffrage in time for the 1933 election after ‘winning’ a debate with Kent.

Campoamor and Kent had already shown themselves to be an inspiration for women. They were the first two women members of the Madrid Bar Association who broke a glass ceiling when entering the university to study law.

Campoamor went into exile during the Civil War and died in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1972 at the age of 82.

Kent also went into exile, dying in New York at age 96 in 1987.