Publication of the winning work of the 2023 Pasqual Maragall Legacy Award, corresponding to the Final Master’s Thesis in Contemporary History and the Modern World at the University of Barcelona (UB) by Júlia Manresa Nogueras, a journalist specialized in economics and European Union affairs, currently working as a communications advisor at the Oxfam office in Brussels.

European construction was also the work of women. This study is a small illustration of that. Building on the path opened by a limited group of historians, Women in the Shadow of European Construction explores the life, contributions, and evolution of the political influence group Femmes pour l’Europe, founded in Brussels in 1974 by the anti-fascist activist Ursula Hirschmann, who also co-founded the European Federalist Movement alongside Altiero Spinelli.

From there, the study analyzes the relevance and particularity of this group, composed of senior officials of the European Community, academics, and activists, who understood that in European institutions lacking democratic legitimacy, lobbying was crucial to give women the voice, role, and influence they deserved. They themselves, working within the very European institutions they often criticized, fought so that other women and their organizations could have a voice in Brussels, focusing their efforts on fundamental issues such as women’s participation in the first European elections by universal suffrage in 1979 and the directive on equal pay.

To understand the significance of this organization, the study briefly presents five of the most important members and leaders of Femmes pour l’Europe, such as Fausta Deshormes La Valle, Director of the Women’s Information Service of the European Commission, and Éliane Vogel-Polsky, an academic and expert in social and European law. Finally, the study confirms the link between this 1970s organization and the still-active European Women’s Lobby, also founded in the Belgian capital in 1991.