Catret o Scissor chair

The catret is a scissor chair with a wooden structure and a seat made up of leather strips. This folding chair, used to go to the church during the first decades of the 20th century, visualizes the long and contradictory process of conquest of public space by the Catholic woman. The portable chair, with all its symbolic and practical connotations, could be pointed out as a material metaphor for the paradoxes of female relations with religion. The Spaniards of the early 20th century left their homes to devote themselves to the social activities to which the Church told them; and within the dichotomy between official discourse and personal and group practice, they ended up promoting their own organizations and finding a political meaning in the compensatory model. However, this politicization was inscribed within the line of defense of the traditional order; the socialization of women, rather than expanding their sphere, domesticated public space.