Carolina Beatriz Ângelo

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (right) on election day, accompanied by Ana de Castro Osorio, president of the Portuguese women's suffrage movement

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (born April 16, 1877 or 1878 in São Vicente , Guarda , Portugal ; † October 3, 1911 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese doctor and suffragette . Ângelo was the first Portuguese woman to fight for her right to vote and was therefore the first Portuguese woman to vote in the elections to the Constituent Assembly of 1911 .

Life

Education and marriage

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was born on April 16, 1878 (or 1877 according to other sources) as one of four children in the parish of São Vicente in the inner-Portuguese city of Guarda . She was the daughter of Viriato António Ângelo and Emília Barreto Ângelo. In Guarda she also completed her school education. With the desire to become a doctor, Ângelo moved to Lisbon, where she attended the Polytechnic School of Surgical Medicine. Ângelo completed her medical studies in 1902. After graduating, she was one of the first female doctors to work as a surgeon in Hospital São José , later specializing in gynecology .

In the year of her graduation, Ângelo married her cousin Januário Barreto, an avowed Republican activist and also a doctor. A year later, in 1903, they both had a daughter, whom they named Maria Emília Ângelo Barreto. Her husband Januário died in 1910.

Engagement in women's movements

Extract from the Portuguese daily newspaper O Século with a report on the election of the Constituent Assembly in Portugal. Quote: "A remarkable aspect of these elections was that a woman voted [;] the only Portuguese voter, the doctor Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, registered with the number 2: 513 in the parish of S. Jorge de Arroyos".

In 1906, Ângelo and other doctors began to be politically involved in women's movements, which campaigned for the introduction of the republic and, in particular, the right to vote for women. Until then, according to Portuguese law, only "Portuguese citizens over the age of 21 who can read and write and who are heads of families" were allowed to vote.

Initially, Ângelo became a member of the Portuguese section of the French organization La Paix et le Désarmement par les Femmes , where she took on the role of an assessor on the board. Ângelo organized with several colleagues, colleagues and friends - namely Adelaide Cabete, Domitila de Carvalho, Emília Patacho, Maria do Carmo Lopes - to discuss which organizational form and strategy would be best suited for their goals. In 1907/08 the group worked in the Grupo Português de Estudos Feministas, later they moved to the Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas , which was founded in August 1908 .

From then on, Ângelo was intensively involved in the Liga Republicana and was also active for the league on a national level, initially (from February 1909) as an assessor on the board, later as deputy chairwoman (elected in September 1910 and January 1911). However, Ângelo was increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the Liga Republicana, which campaigned for women in general, but not for the right to vote in particular. Because of this, she resigned from her post as deputy chairwoman in April 1911 and founded the Associação de Propaganda Feminista with her colleague Ana de Castro Osório in May . This is still considered to be the first Portuguese women's suffrage organization.

Elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1911

With the proclamation of the republic in 1910, Ângelo saw her chance to choose. She applied to the electoral commission of the second electoral district of Lisbon to be included in the electoral register because she was a widow and head of the family with her daughter, was over 21 years old and had studied. Grammatically, this was also quite possible, since in the Portuguese language words in the masculine plural include both men and women.

The electoral commission initially rejected the request from Angelos, whereas they again appealed to the court ( Tribunal da Boa-Hora ). On April 28, 1911, Judge João Baptista de Castro ruled that excluding a woman from the electoral register solely on the basis of her gender would be absurd and would not correspond to the ideals of democracy and justice as propagated by the Republican Party for the Revolution. Because of this, the applicant should be included in the electoral register.

So it came about that one month later, on May 28, 1911, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was the first Portuguese woman to take part in the elections for the Constituent Assembly ( Assembleia Constituinte ). She actually voted at the polling station in Arroios in the "Clube Estefânia", which even led to an incident because the polling station's electoral officer initially refused to accept her vote - despite her entry in the electoral register. The historical act attracted a great deal of press attention, with numerous newspapers reporting on the Angelos election. Never before had so many Portuguese newspapers reported on a feminist and suffragette. The portrait of her and her friend and colleague Ana de Castro Osório, photographed by Joshua Benoliel (see above right), was created in this context.

death

In July and August of the same year, Ângelo complained of constant fatigue due to a lot of work and the numerous discussions during the year. On October 3, 1911, Ângelo died of a heart attack at the age of 34, leaving her eight-year-old daughter an orphan. Ângelo was buried on the Cemitério dos Prazeres .

Effects

The electoral law for women - even if restricted and only obtainable under special conditions - did not last long. As early as 1913, the electoral law was changed in such a way that only male Portuguese citizens were allowed to vote. It was not until 1931, under the Salazar dictatorship , that women again had restricted voting rights, but they had to have attended at least high school, in contrast to male Portuguese who only had to be able to read and write. Full suffrage for women in Portugal was not adopted until after the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974.

Honors

There are only a few honors for Ângelo in Portugal, including a street and a primary school in her native Guarda , as well as a hospital named after her in the Lisbon suburb of Loures .

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} The sources contradict each other on Ângelo's date of birth. Her hometown district archive lists 1878 as her year of birth, while many others cite scientific articles as 1877.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Levi Manuel Coelho: Carolina Beatriz Angelo (1878-1911). In: www.arquivo.guarda.pt. Retrieved March 6, 2016 (Portuguese). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} João Esteves: Carolina Beatriz Ângelo. In: Faces de Eva. Estudos sobre a Mulher. 2004, accessed March 6, 2016 (Portuguese).