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Carolina Beatriz Ângelo

In 1911, a gynaecologist, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, a member of the Republican Women's League, was the first and only woman to vote in the elections for the parliament of the 1st Portuguese Republic. Portugal, April 1975. One year after the revolution, men and women voted for the first time on an equal footing. A long and hard battle of more than 100 years of the feminist movement for the right to a fair political vote came to an end. In 1913, in the United Kingdom, a woman of 41 years, Emily Davidson, was projected against the horse of the king Jorge V, in protest and in the name of the suffragist cause. The electoral law authorised the voting to the majors of 21 years and heads of family, which translated, in practice, by the prohibition of the female vote. But Carolina Beatriz Ângelo found a "hole" in the law and being a widow, and with a dependent daughter, she enrolled in the electoral rolls. After a short but intense legal debate, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was allowed to vote. Carolina died at age 33 in the same election year. The same Republican politicians, in which Carolina had voted, quickly altered the law, preventing the female vote. What would Carolina, who struggled so much to vote, think of the current levels of abstention, also in women?

Summary

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (6 April 1878 – 3 October 1911) was a Portuguese physician and the first woman to vote in Portugal. She used the ambiguity of law, that issued the right to vote to literate head-of-households over 21, to cast her vote in the election of the Constituent National Assembly in 1911. Shortly thereafter, on July 3, 1913, a law was passed to specify the right to vote was only for male citizens, literate and over 21. Her act was widely reported on throughout Portugal and among feminist associations in other countries.

Biography

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was born on April 16, 1878, in São Vicente, in the district of Guarda, daughter of Emília Clementina de Castro Barreto and Viriato António Ângelo. He grew up in a liberal family environment. His father supported the Progressive Party and was connected to journalistic activity, which allowed him to enter the Liceu da Guarda in 1891, where he studied primary and secondary education and later joined the Polytechnic and Medical-Surgical Schools in Lisbon, where he completed his a medical course in 1902. That same year, he married Januário Gonçalves Barreto Duarte, his cousin, Casapian, physician, Republican activist and one of the founders of the Portuguese Football League. In his medical career, he emphasised the fact that in 1903 he presented his inaugural dissertation "Prolapsus Genitales (Apontamentos)", beginning his practice as the first Portuguese surgeon, a remarkable achievement that contradicts the actively sexist tendency of the operative blocks of the time. She would then become the first Portuguese woman to operate at the São José Hospital, under the direction of Sabino Maria Teixeira Coelho. He also worked in the Psychiatric Hospital of Rilhafoles, under the guidance of Miguel Bombarda, and dedicated to Gynecology, with a private practice in downtown Lisbon. The anti-monarchist environment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century warped the republican, Masonic and feminist ideology between the liberal bourgeoisie of Lisbon and without exception, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo. Its militancy in women's rights organizations began in 1906 in the Portuguese Committee of the French association La Paix et le Désarmement par Les Femmes, an association whose purpose was the resolution of warlike conflicts by the form of dialogue, followed in 1907, in the Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies, led by Ana de Castro Osório, and in Freemasonry, in the Humanity Lodge, under the symbolic name of Ligia. In 1909, she was part of the women's group that founded the Republican League of Portuguese Women, a champion of republican ideals, women's suffrage, the right to divorce, the education of children and equal rights and duties for men and women. Only a year later, her husband Januário Barreto died, a victim of tuberculosis, without first seeing the end of the Monarchy, as she so desired, leaving her with her daughter Maria Emília Barreto Ângelo, still small, to raise. On 5 October 1910, the Implantation of the Republic took place, with Carolina Beatriz Ângelo and Adelaide Cabete responsible for the secret making of the red and green flags, symbolising the victorious revolution. Soon after, she was involved in the founding of the Feminist Propaganda Association. This association, which came to rule, had its origin in the split of the Republican League of Portuguese Women on issues related to female suffrage. In the ambit of the Feminist Propaganda Association, she has planned the creation of a school of nurses, which is referred to as another manifestation of her concern for the emancipation of women. All over Europe, and not only for years, but suffragettes had also loudly vowed the right to vote for women, and New Zealand had become the first country to grant it in 1893. In Europe, Finland was the only country recognition of female suffrage in 1911. The second page of the article "The constituents are elected: The election in Lisbon", in the weekly magazine "Illustração Portugueza" (with the newspaper "O Século"), No. 276, page 12 (714), Lisbon, June 5 1911 The first electoral law of the Portuguese Republic recognised the right to vote for "Portuguese citizens who were over 21 years old, who could read and write and were heads of families". Carolina Angelo saw in this wording of the law the opportunity to "subvert" it in its favour, since, grammatically, the masculine plural of the words includes masculine and feminine. A widow and a minor daughter in charge, over 21 years of age and educated, addressed to the president of the census commission of the 2nd District of Lisbon a request that his name is included in the new electoral census to be carried out '. The claim was rejected by the census commission, which led her to appeal in court, arguing that the law did not expressly exclude women. On April 28, 1911, Judge João Baptista de Castro, father of Ana de Castro Osório, pronounced the sentence that would remain for History: "Excluding women ... just because they are women ... is simply absurd and unfair and in opposition to the very ideas of democracy and justice proclaimed by the Republican Party. (...) Where the law does not distinguish, the judge can not distinguish (...) and order that the claimant is included in the electoral census ». Thus, on May 28, 1911, in elections to the Constituent Assembly, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo became the first Portuguese woman to exercise the right to vote, but not without a small incident, which she reported to the newspaper A Capital: « At the end of the first call, the chairman of the polling station, Mr. Constâncio de Oliveira, consulted the bureau about whether or not to accept my vote, in fact, extravagant consultation, since, being registered by virtue of a judicial decision, it did not have the competence to meddle in the subject. " The case is widely reported in Portugal and congratulated in several countries of the world by feminist associations. In July and August she complains of extreme exhaustion, "I have worked hard" ... of her struggle, of the whole day discussing and thinking, and perhaps, for this reason, she wrote "a declaration to be buried civilly, which would be made public in the following year at the time of the respective funeral. " He also took action on the future of his eight-year-old daughter, Maria Emília Ângelo Barreto, urging her family members to "survive, be exempt from conventional mourning," and "do not force the girl to mourn for her mother." On October 3, 1911, just four months after she voted, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo died of cardiac syncope at age 33. According to reports from then, she felt ill during the exciting journey, while returning to her residence on Rua António Pedro, where she attended a political meeting with other feminists of the Feminist Propaganda Association and died two hours later, House. She was buried in the Cemetery of Pleasures. It leaves as testimony to posterity harsh criticism of the Republic and the Republicans ("Except our Afonso Costa, the rest is not worth two snails"). His gesture would have as a direct consequence a retrogression in the law: the Electoral Code of 1913 stated that "Portuguese citizens who are over 21 years of age or who complete that age until the end of the census operations, who are in full enjoyment of their civil and political rights, can read and write Portuguese, reside in the territory of the Portuguese Republic." Portuguese women would have to wait for the year 1931 to be granted the right to vote, and yet with restrictions: only those who had secondary or higher courses could vote, while for men it was still enough to know how to read and write. The electoral law of May 1946 extended the right to vote to men who, being illiterate, paid the State at least 100 escudos of taxes and to women heads of families and married women who, knowing how to read and write, had their own assets and paid for less 200 escudos of property tax ... In December 1968 the women's political right to vote was recognised, but the parish councils continued to be elected only by heads of families. Just in 1974, after April 25, all restrictions on the electoral capacity of citizens based on gender would be abolished.

http://www.cdocfeminista.org/index.php/pt/biografias-de-feministas/49-carolina-beatriz-angelo-1878-1911 Programa Câmara Clara (Radio Televisão de Portugal) (português)

Fundação do Instituto Politécnico do Porto (português)

Exposição: Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, Centenário da República (português)

HISTÓRIA DA DR.ª CAROLINA BEATRIZ ÂNGELO – a morte precoce de uma lutadora graças à injustiça dos seus correligionários republicanos.