Brazilian Federation of Feminine Progress

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The Federação Brasileira para o Progresso Feminino ([FBPF] Brazilian Federation of Feminine Progress, also known as the Brazilian Federation for the Advancement of Women) was a national organization that successfully fought for women’s suffrage in Brazil. Due to FBPF efforts, a 1932 civil code extended the vote to women under the same conditions as men, making Brazil the fourth country in the western hemisphere to franchise women

[edit] Founding

FBPF was founded in 1922 by Bertha Lutz, a biologist and the daughter of European-born parents in the medical profession. Inspired by the English suffrage movement while studying in Europe, Bertha Lutz returned to Brazil and founded the Ligação para o Emacipação Intelectual da Mulher (the Organization for the Intellectual Emancipation of Women), which emphasized scientific and rational study as key to women’s liberation. In 1922 she served as Brazil’s official delegate for the first Pan American Conference of Women, held in Baltimore under sponsorship of the National League of Women Voters. Upon returning to Brazil, Bertha Lutz transformed the Ligação into FBPF, which quickly became the largest women’s organization in Brazil.

Although mainly founded and run by professional women, FBPF attracted members from various classes. FBPF leaders connected women’s political rights with their economic independence, supporting issues such as living wages, equal pay for equal work, and paid maternity leave. However, leaders primarily focused organizational efforts on voting rights, actively challenging the idea that politics was a dishonorable realm for women. Drawing upon the country’s desire to be a modern nation, FBPF publicized their voting efforts as within the national interest, and utilized personal political contacts to try and pass a bill for women’s suffrage.

[edit] Influence

FBPF efforts were met with resistance until an economic slump divided the country’s elites and led to the 1930 presidency of Getúlio Vargas through a nonviolent coup. Vowing to prevent another monopoly of power, Vargas began drafting a new electoral code. Sensing their opportunity, FBPF leaders stepped up their franchise efforts, and in 1932 a civil code extended the vote to women who were literate, the same requirement as men.

After female franchisement was written into the new Brazilian Constitution of 1934, FBPF lost its main issue, and began fragmenting. Many leaders focused on running female candidates for congressional elections, with Bertha Lutz serving in the Chamber of Deputies in 1936. The organization’s efforts were shattered with Vargas’s formation of the Estado Novo (New State) in 1937, a corporatist state that regarded women as wives and mothers rather than political allies. After the fall of the Estado Novo in 1945, women’s right to vote remained intact, although women’s roles in Brazil would not be significantly challenged until the new feminist movement of the late 1970s and 80s.

[edit] References

Hahner, June E. 1990. Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in Brazil, 1850-1940. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.