Why it is important to promote women's education?

Because they were and are education providers and guiders. Ladies are in charge with the child development since the pre-natal state. You give them access to education, they teach new generations.

In Education Sciences there is a dominant feminine presence. The fine dexterity processing skills makes women specialist in different domains and excellent teachers and their implication in occupational therapy or special education intervention is majoritary and undeniable.

Francesca Bonnemaison i Farriols demonstrated that even if you are rich, you can have a positive influence in your neighborhood by acting for human rights. She was a Spanish Catalan educator and promoter of women's education in Catalonia. Bonnemaison founded the Biblioteca Popular de la Dona (Women's Popular Library), the first library exclusively for women in Europe, in Barcelona in 1909.

The institution even had a bar and a restaurant, allowing women to enjoy a freedom that was absolutely unusual at the time. Women were not allowed to enter a restaurant until the 1970s in the rest of Spain.

It was the first women's library in Europe, offering working women access to culture, education and information. She offered classes in feminism, sewing, cooking, business calculation, typing, arithmetic, grammar in several languages, shorthand and physical education. The institution was created, managed and directed by women. One of the students was Maria Montessori, who later used the dexterity techniques and the educational model in special education.

Given that the institution created by Bonnemaison was free and dedicated to all categories of women, regardless of their social status and that the Montessori methods are in essence preschool educational approaches and professional education based on a sense of equality, she had to learn in Barcelona and I wonder why these methods are now a parallel educational model instead of being integrated into the school curriculum. In special education we use the so-called Montessori methods, in the preschool years and in classical education as well. Adapting space and tools to individual specificity, once we know the specificity, it is a matter of facilitating learning and guiding development.

Women's institutions are derived from the old village women's gatherings, Sezatori in my region, where they made fabrics, clothes, decorations or prepared food for the cold season. There are places where women met and connected for the community. In these kinds of gatherings, stories were told, songs were sung and tragedies were transformed into fabric paintings and local patterns.

Women's gatherings changed things silently but surely and where these groups collaborated, the whole region gained in quality of life and the younger generations were better protected. Access to education is a necessity and a right for which we are still fighting and precisely those who are responsible for teaching (mothers, grandmothers, aunts ...) are not supported to learn.

In Barcelona and Spain in general, the lack of access to education for women is observable in the culinary literature that disappeared for long periods, until recently. Many households still have a ceremonial chef and a multi-talented woman included, but not free.