Feminism in Argentina is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women in Argentina. Although some women have been considered precursors—among them Juana Manso and Juana Manuela Gorriti—feminism was introduced to the country as a result of the great European immigration wave that took place in the late 19th and early 20th century. The first feminists did not form a unified movement, but included anarchist and socialist activists, who incorporated women's issues into their revolutionary program, and prestigious freethinker women, who initially fought for access to higher education and, later, legal equality with men. The early 20th century was also full of women fighting for their freedom and rights in the workplace. Despite the efforts of the first-wave feminists, Argentine women did not acquire the right to vote until 1947, during Juan Perón's first government. His highly popular wife, Eva, championed women's suffrage and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party. Although she refused to identify herself as a feminist, Eva Perón is valued for having redefined the role of women in politics.
The convulsive period between the late 1960s and mid-1970s was one of intense social transformations and political activism. Among the feminist organization that appeared were the Unión Feminista Argentina (UFA; English: Argentine Feminist Union) and the Movimiento de Liberación Feminista (MLF; English: Feminist Liberation Movement).
History Precursors
Between 12 November 1830, and 14 January 1831—during the first government of Juan Manuel de Rosas—Uruguayan-born journalist Petrona Rosende de Sierra published what is considered to be the first Argentine publication written by and for women: La Aljaba (English: The Quiver). In addition to art, literature and friendship, the newspaper dealt with topics such as the intellectual formation of women, their role in society and their position in relation to men. Rosende de Sierra advocated the adoption of European educational theories, claiming that the government should provide primary and secondary education to women, who must have faith in their own capacity and prove their ability to overcome the resistance to female education.Carlson, 2005. p. 60 In one of the issues, the writer questioned her readers: "Until when the female sex will be seen plunged into the darkness in which it was locked by the oppressive system of those who denied the simplest knowledges?" Another periodical that argued for women's right to education was La Camelia (English: The Camellia), edited in 1852 by Rosa Guerra, the principal of a small private girls' school in Buenos Aires. Unlike Rosende de Sierra twenty years earlier, Guerra "believed that women did not need to prove themselves worthy of education, but had a moral and legal right to it"; she presented it as the solution of women's problems. At the same time, La Camelia warned that women "must not lose their feminine modesty" and avoid coming across as intellectuals as it "could be equated with loose morality." During its brief life, the publication also supported dress reform, claiming women dressed as "ornamental dolls".Carlson, 2005. p. 61 Dress reform was a controversial issue at the time, and despite her emphasis on the importance of modesty in dress, Guerra was harshly criticised by influential Catholic women and the Church. In 1854, Guerra started another publication called La Educación (English: The Education) similar in format to La Camelia. She was a prolific writer who also produced novels, children's books and articles and poetry for the daily newspapers. Despite her liberal politics, Guerra did not depart from the notion of "citizen-training mother" as the main role of women. She believed women were born to suffer for love, with female self-sacrifice being a constant theme in her work. This "romantic concept of womanly martyrdom" was a dominant theme in Argentine women's literature of the mid-19th century, which exalted female virtues at the expense of men's selfishness.Carlson, 2005. p. 62
Born in Buenos Aires on 26 June 1819, Juana Manso was a writer, translator, journalist, teacher and precursor of feminism in South America. In fact, she is considered by many as the first feminist of Argentina. Manso lived in Rio de Janeiro from 1849 to 1853, where she published The Women's Journal (Portuguese: O Jornal das Senhoras), a periodical modeled on an English magazine of the same name that, "argued against discrimination against women and supported equal education for Latin American women."Carlson, 2005. p. 67 Back in Buenos Aires, she founded the Ladies' Album (Spanish: Álbum de Señoritas), with a very similar theme to the Brazilian journal. In her periodicals and novels, Manso advocated her ideas on equality of women, popular education and abolitionism, which were met with resistance by Argentine society, as it remained hostile to any manifestation that meant breaking ties with the colonial era. In an 1853 article titled "The Moral Emancipation of Women", published in the journal The Argentine Enlightenment (Spanish: La Ilustración Argentina), Manso wrote: The moral emancipation of women is considered by vulgarity as the apocalypse of the century. Some run to the dictionary and exclaim: There is no parental authority! Goodbye marital despotism! To emancipate the woman! How! For that junk in the living room (or kitchen), that procreative machine, that golden zero, that frivolous toy, that doll of fashions, will it be a rational being? [...] How! Would she be one day equal to the man in sacred rights that brutality trampled until today without mercy? Unheard-of scandal! What could young people use to pretend the heart of beauties? How (say the stubborn) after treating women as our property we would have to recognize our equal in it! [...] There will come a day when the code of the peoples will guarantee women the rights of their freedom and their intelligence. Humanity can not be retrograde. [...] Her intelligence, cultivated, will improve the moral faculties and make her exercise the inevitable influence that nature gives her in the great destinies of humanity; yes; because the mission of the woman is serious and great. in
First-wave
Feminism in the country emerged at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, during the consolidation of the modern Argentine State. There was not a homogenous feminist movement, rather individual struggles carried out by women inserted in diverse political identities and different social classes. Women from the upper and upper middle class made important advances in the public space, although they did it fundamentally from the academic field.Macoc, 2011. p. 157 Working class women were organized under socialism and anarchism.Macoc, 2011. p. 158 A group of anarchist women headed by Virginia Bolten founded La Voz de la Mujer in 1896, the first feminist newspaper in Argentina. It defined itself as anarcho-communist and was released under the motto "No God, no master, no husband". As one of the first recorded instances in Latin America of the fusion of feminist ideas with a revolutionary and working class orientation, La Voz de la Mujer differed from the feminism found elsewhere in the region at that time, which focused on educated middle-class women and their concerns. By the end of the 19th century, these anarchists raised issues as free love, divorce and allegations of domestic violence, which would gain public prominence decades later.
From the turn of the century on, a different variant of feminism emerged, that of the Socialist Party, with women such as Cecilia Grierson, Alicia Moreau de Justo and Juana Rouco Buela; who "launched the struggle for equal rights, better educational opportunities, and reform of the civil code, and in so doing they radically redefined the politics, strategy, and terrain of feminist struggle." The first feminists of the country, both the reformists as well as the suffragettes and even those of more extreme positions, believed in a "maternal, morally superior, and pacifist feminine nature." Mayra Leciñana of Clarín wrote that "the theoretical alliances with socialism and the positivism of the moment enable a utopian bias that gives thickness to their demands and allows the production of new meanings for 'the new woman'." A "transcendental" figure in the history of Argentine feminism, Elvira López became one of the first women to graduate from the University of Buenos Aires' School of Philosophy and Philology. Her thesis, written in 1901 and titled "The feminist movement" (Spanish: "El movimiento feminista"), is considered a local landmark and meant the issue's entry into the Argentine academic field.
In 1904, Julieta Lanteri, Cecilia Grierson, Sara Justo, Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane and sisters Ernestina and Elvira López created the Asociación de Mujeres Universitarias Argentinas (English: Association of Argentine University Women), whose positions were identified with those of the so-called "moderate feminism".Lorenzo, 2017. p. 71 On the occasion of the Argentina Centennial of 1910 and on the initiative of Lanteri, this association organized the First International Women's Congress (Spanish: Primer Congreso Femenino Internacional) in order to bring the situation of women and their rights to public debate. The association was then chaired by Petrona Eyle, and the organizing committee for the Congress counted among its members with distinguished professionals and activists such as Lanteri, Justo, Grierson, Irma Vertúa, Ada María Elflein, Moreau de Justo, Fenia Chertkoff, doctors Leonor and María Teresa Martínez Bisso, among others.
On 16 February 1906, Rawson de Dellepiane founded the Feminist Center (Spanish: Centro Feminista) in Buenos Aires, joined by a group of prestigious women.
1920s
The feminist movement during the 1920s was especially relevant, as activists achieved greater organization, perseverance and scope of membership to push for the rights that women were getting in other countries.Barrancos, 2010. Section "Los movimientos de mujeres y feministas en los años 20. El sufragio en el congreso" within Chapter IV: "Sociedad y género a principios del siglo XX. El despertar del feminismo" The end of World War I ushered in a new period of political restlessness among urban Argentines. The feasibility of female suffrage was reinforced by news of women's activities in the war and the debate that was taking place in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.Lavrin, 1998. p. 267 In this context, the National Congress received several bills of women's suffrage in the decade, although all of them were shelved and disregarded. The constitution of Santa Fe Province of 1921 recognized the right of women to vote in municipal elections. In 1928, under a new constitution women from San Juan Province voted in provincial elections.