On January 25, Mercedes Montero, team member researcher , gave a lecture seminar on the first female professors of Opus Dei. plenary session of the Executive Council The chronological arc covered the period from the 1943 Law of University Organization, promulgated during the Franco regime, to the implementation of the 1983 University Reform Law, during the first socialist government after the transition to democracy. Those forty years saw the first women professors at the University entrance . At the end of the period they accounted for 2.4% of all professors: exactly 62 in a body of civil servants that totaled 2,494 individuals.
Among these women were seven belonging to Opus Dei, 11% of the total number of female professors. This is a small number but sufficiently relevant to be studied in the academic world. Four of them obtained the Chair in science disciplines and three in the field of Humanities. All but one of them worked at the University of Navarra, where they held positions as vice-rectors, deans and directors of department. This is an ongoing research which aims to become a prosopography of the first women Opus Dei university professors. The sources are in-depth interviews, and the enquiry of three archives: the file General of the Administration (AGA; Alcalá de Henares), the file of the University of Navarra (AGUN) and the file General of the Prelature (AGP).
The research is oriented from the History of the women of Opus Dei, the least known part of the Work, to examine its expansion in all social and professional spheres.