Gender and Bankarization in Spain, 1949-1970

This article analyzes an unexplored register of Spanish banks’ marketing material to document the access of women to the retail banking sector. In 1949 the Franco dictatorship deployed a Censorship Bureau to supervise all retail bank marketing. Initially this office was part of the Finance Ministry but in 1962 it was relocated to the Central Bank. Examination of this printed material allowed us to map a shift in bank strategies towards large-scale consumer banking, which we labelled ‘bankarization’. We identified three stages in this shift: (1) women appeared as passive clients; (2) steps taken by the banks to attract women as active customers, (3) the banks actively engaged in the recruitment of female customers. This research contributes to the history of marketing and the business history of banking, and sheds light on the intricate connection of the feminisation of retail banking.