Women's Rights

• Women in the workplace earn 98 percent of what men do in Argentina.

• The percentage of female representation in the Argentine National Legislature has grown from 4.3 % in 1983, 5.9 % in 1992, and 14 % in 1993.

• Argentina was the first Latin American country to adopt a quota law for women's participation in Congress.

• Argentinean women are shadowed by the historically traditional of Catholic influence, and "machismo" culture.

• Woman was defined in relation to man

• Education would solve women's problems, gives them the self.respect and make them fit companions for educated men.

• Women must not lose their feminine modesty.

• Women must avoid giving an impression of intellectualism which could be equated with loose morality.

 

In Argentina, women’s rights were based on Spanish Law, or the Roman Law, and the Napoleonic Code. Married women were the property of their husbands, and single women had their father’s authority over her.

Because of past Moorish rule and tradition, women could not hold political or administrative positions in the colony, and families usually had them get married at around 15 and 18, their husbands about 15 or 30 years older. In the colony, they couldn’t receive land, even if they were widows. Families usually gave the estates to the male heir(s).

Women were treated as children and needed to be under their husband’s or father’s care.

Immigration helped in the role of achieving rights for women, bringing their ideas with them to Argentina.

• Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) was a strong advocate for women’s education to not only be better mothers, but to participate in politics and the public, as an alternative to arranged marriages.

• 1823: President Rivadavia of Argentina founded the Argentine Beneficent Society. It was a philanthropic organization and was run by women, supported by the government. The organization founded schools and administered all government charitable organizations and women’s educational institutions.

• 1905: Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane founded the Feminist Center, and also one of the founders of the Argentine Association of University Women. The Feminist Center focused on political and social reform, and the name was later changed to Manuela Gorriffl Center. Feminists and other services provided to women could meet there.

• 1906-1907: Carolina Muzzili (1880-?) reported on the factory conditions for women, and was a working class immigrant. The reports were used to gain protective legislation for women’s working hours and their conditions. It was passed, but not enforced.

• 1906: Dr. Grierson studied the Civil Codes, and it showed that married women had the status of children, still.

• 1910: Ernestina Lopez (1879-1965) was the first woman to earn a doctorate in Arts and Letters from the University of Buenos Aires. She was one of the founders of the AAUW and an organizer for the First International Feminist Congress of Argentina.

• 1926: Adult, married women were given equal civil rights as men.

            Unmarried mothers were given parental rights over their children.

            Married women could enter professions and use their income and pay without the consent of

            their husbands and could enter into civil contracts.

            Widows were granted authority over their children and the estates of minor children. It didn’t

            matter if they were remarried, or not.

 

• 1958: Dr. Alicia Moreau de Justo (1885-1977) helped found the Socialist Feminist Center when she was 15. Her father was respected Socialist leader, and she was a respected social worker and writer, before receiving a degree in medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. She supported education for women strongly, because it was needed to get civil and political equality. She was one of the founders of the feminist movement in Argentina.

 

 Source : http://www.fsdinternational.org/country/argentina/weissues

                http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/arg.html