Like
other Portuguese feminist women in the early twentieth century, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo participated actively
and symbolically in the implementation of the Portuguese Republic. She wrote
against monarchs while helping to sew and embroider the national
flags that were raised in Lisbon in 1910. She formed the Portuguese
Group of Feminist Studies, and the Association of Feminist Propaganda
with Ana de Castro Osório, another outstanding feminist personality
and founder of the first feminist association, The Portuguese Group
of Feminist Studies, in 1907. Ângelo, who obtained her degree in Medicine when she was 24 years
old, became a pioneer of women's suffrage in 1911 when she used the
electoral law to ask for permission to register for the vote. The law
offered the vote to all Portuguese citizens without mentioning
gender. It required that, in order to vote, one had to be head of
household and literate in Portuguese. As a widow with a child to
support, Ângelo fit in all the requirements, and she succeeded in
becoming voter no. 2513, as head of her family. Two years later,
however, the Republican party decided to change the electoral law by
stating clearly that the vote was available to male heads of
household only. Portuguese women were thus denied a place and a say
in the public sphere by their male Republican partners, on the basis
of the supposed 'religious fanaticism of the women, which would
constitute a hindrance to Republican values' (Esteves 1998: 74 in
Pereira 2006: 190).
Nevertheless,
the international impact of Ângelo's vote was very strong. Because
of her achievement, Portugal was seen as a pioneer country in what
regarded women's suffrage. The news was welcomed by feminists all
over Europe, who sent telegrams and letters to the Association of
Feminist Propaganda congratulating Ângelo.ii
Portugal was seen as a symbol of hope for the women's first-wave
community, and a country of feminist possibility. Graça Abranches
(1998) has suggested that, although it would be tempting to draw a
parallel between the organized and vocal feminist movement of the
First Republic and the notoriety achieved by the case of New
Portuguese Letters in 1972, the
parallel cannot be drawn “because of the nature of the regime”
(Abranches 1998: 6). While I agree that the political differences
need to be taken into consideration, since Portugal's fascist
dictatorship prevented women in the early 1970s from organizing a
women's movement as had been done at the turn of the century, an
important parallel remains to be drawn here, I believe, in terms of
the consequences of the international impact of Portuguese feminist
actions for the self-fashioning of Portuguese women as feminists.
What is interesting about this episode, which signals a Portuguese relationship with the international world
of feminist solidarity politics – a version of which would be
re-enacted in the 1970s, with the publication of
New
Portuguese Letters – is that it was
largely at odds with the kind of feminist thought that was actually
being produced in this country. Portugal was (momentarily)
transformed into an international political symbol of feminist unity,
despite the fact that, as described by Margarida Pereira (2006), the
writings of Portuguese early feminists transpired a strong sense of
morality “denoting a conservatism that is very far removed, for
example, from the political commitment of English suffragettes”
(Pereira 2006: 187). Pereira posits, correctly, that Portugal's rigid
Catholic morality hindered women's access to education, so that when
feminism reached Portugal at the turn of the twentieth-century only a
handful of women, mainly from the privileged classes, got involved in
claiming the feminist label.iii
Pereira goes on to argue that, while this may explain why early
Portuguese feminists were particularly vocal about the right for
women's education, it does not entirely account for the fact that the
early Portuguese feminist fight was one for social, rather than
political rights. To her mind, the fact that Portuguese feminism
involved a celebration of women as mothers, wives and educators
stands as an “ideological
contradiction” (Pereira 2006: 187). However, this assessment
reveals, in part, a perception of the Portuguese feminist movement as a mere
version of someone else's (in this case, a version of English
suffragettes') feminism. I suggest, instead, that the early
Portuguese feminist emphasis on the link between female autonomy and
the social role of women as nurturers and supporters of their
families and communities may be read as an early articulation of the
distinctive
character of the Portuguese feminist experience, which involved an
early refusal to choose between identity politics (being a Portuguese
woman) and political praxis (being a feminist).
When Portuguese
feminist Virgínia de Castro e Almeida writes in 1913 that “the
noblest missions of a woman are, undoubtedly, love, motherhood, and
education” (in Pereira 2006: 187), she is articulating a perspective that takes into account the specificities of the
Portuguese female experiences along economic, cultural, political and
social lines. The feminist movement of the First Republic, with the story of Ângelo's vote at its core, inaugurates –
despite the context of strong international pressure to transform
Portugal into a symbol of international feminism – a Portuguese
female tradition of reclaiming a specific historical position that differs from the notion of a universal feminist sisterhood. This situation may have
contributed to shaping a Portuguese feminist consciousness whose
contours can be observed in the decades following the Three Marias' notorious case.
More research is needed on this front! How did Portuguese women (re)create themselves as feminists throughout the
twentieth century and especially in the 1970s? How
did they relate to pre-existing social groups, and to the feminist
international community in particular? What kind of alliances with
other feminists beyond the national borders did they forge, and what
were the consequences of those alliances for their self-perception as
feminists?
Notes
iAna
de Castro Osório published
As Mulheres Portuguesas in 1905, the
first Portuguese feminist manifesto where she emphasises the need to
educate women. She also defends that women should work outside the
home and be independent. Osório also became involved in the
National Council of Portuguese Women, an umbrella organization for
women's groups, later closed down by the Salazar regime in 1947. See
Wayne 2011: 371.
iiiIlliteracy
rates were high, and most Portuguese women were unskilled workers
throughout the first half of the twentieth-century. In 1940,
56,1% Portuguese women and 41.2% Portuguese men were illiterate. In
Maria Cândida Proença.
História. O Estado Novo. Materiais para
Professores. Lisboa: Instituto de Inovação Educacional,
Ministério da Educação. 1997: 64, in Ferreira 2002: 26.