The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Feminism in Argentina from Roca to Perón

Abstract

While most academic works on women’s suffrage in Argentina focus on the Peronist period, Gregory Hammond places the law granting women the right to vote in a long- term context. The main objective of his book is to explain why, even though both the demand for suffrage and active feminist organizations had existed for decades, Argentine women gained the right to vote only in 1947.The author traces female participation in the public sphere since the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as the beginning of feminist movements at the turn of the twentieth century. He offers a thorough analysis of the first experiences of women associations in Argentina, emphasizing that their internal fragmentation, based on factors like class and political ideology, affected both the scope of their aims and their effectiveness. Suffragist arguments aroused controversy among men due to the increased competition for employment caused by women’s entry into the workforce and the extensive consensus on motherhood as women’s fundamental role. But despite the lack of cohesion among feminist groups and the opposition that they encountered, women’s activism constituted a constant presence in Argentine social and political life, and with ups and downs it made its way on to the political agenda. Hammond examines the advances made by the feminist cause between the centennial of Argentina’s independence and the mid-1920s, a period marked in Europe by the passage of suffrage laws and in Argentina by political democratization and the rise to power of radicalism. Among other achievements in Argentina, the author mentions the first proposed suffrage bills, the formation of the National Feminist Party, a new feminist organization led by Julieta Lanteri, the significant reform of the civil code, and the experience of women’s suffrage in the province of San Juan. And Hammond also accounts for the setbacks experienced by the feminist cause, namely the obstruction of suffrage laws after the coup d’etat in 1930, the so- called conservative restoration. Nevertheless, the new military regime of 1943 showed an unexpected willingness to improve women’s social conditions, and its main political consequence — the emergence of Peronism — resulted in the incorporation of women into the political arena.The decision of President Juan Domingo Perón to include women’s suffrage in his regime’s political agenda was based on the central importance to the populist strategy of mobilizing the masses. As the author points out, the suffrage law approved in 1947 aroused the resistance of the suffragist movement even though it corresponded to the agenda sustained by this movement for decades. Feminists opposed the appropriation of their cause by the Peronist government because they considered the regime authoritarian and opportunistic, followed by working- class women over whom the suffragists never had real influence. The split between feminist leaders and Peronism increased with the formation of the Peronist Women’s Party by the First Lady, María Eva Duarte de Perón. This political structure co- opted female support and arranged it vertically, giving birth to a subordinate feminism strictly controlled by the ruling party. As Hammond states, “Ironically, feminism thus helped pave the way for a more paternalistic state” (p. 6). In the conclusion, the author offers some interpretations of the trajectory of feminism since Perón’s overthrow to the present and suggests some perspectives for new research.In sum, this book, grounded in a methodical analysis of primary sources and an updated bibliography, offers a necessary panorama of feminism in Argentina for both academic readers and the general public.