Female vote in Brazil

O female vote in Brazil it was won in 1932 and incorporated into the 1934 Constitution as an optional.

Only the 1965 Electoral Code equated women's vote with men's.

Origins

Empire - Second Reign

The history of women's voting in Brazil begins when women start to claim more rights in the public sphere.

The first time a woman voted in Brazil was in 1880. The pioneer was the dentist Isabel de Mattos Dillon, which took advantage of the introductions promoted by the Saraiva Law in Brazilian legislation.

This law, from 1880, said that every Brazilian with a scientific title could vote. For this reason, Isabel Dillon used this loophole to exercise her right by requesting her inclusion in the voters' list of Rio Grande do Sul.

First Republic

Celina Guimaraes Viana

Celina Guimarães Viana, the second woman to vote in Brazil.

The Republic, however, did not extend the right to vote to women. It just said that "citizens over the age of 21" could vote. Of course, this excluded women at that time.

The 1891 Constitution, however, said nothing about the creation of an exclusively female political party. Thus, in 1910, the Women's Republican Party emerged, founded by the teacher

Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro.

Inspired by suffragettes English, the PRF organized marches, fought for work-oriented education, and pressured the government to grant it the right to vote.

In 1919, Senator Justo Chermont (PA) presented the first bill on women's suffrage. Through the Brazilian Federation for Women's Progress, led by Bertha Lutz, the women signed a petition that collected two thousand signatures in order to pressure the Senate for the law to be approved. However, the bill is forgotten for years in parliamentarians' drawers.

It is important to note that during the First Republic, Brazil was extremely federalized and the competence to legislate on electoral matters rested with the states.

So in 1927, the state of Rio Grande do Norte allowed women to vote. Therefore, the teacher Celina Guimaraes Viana, in Mossoró, requested and had accepted her registration as a voter.

Following her example, another fifteen women signed up and voted in this election. Subsequently, these women's votes were overturned by the Senate Power Verification Committee, alleging that the state could not have authorized the female vote whose law was still the subject of discussion in the Senate.

Also in Lages / RN, in 1929, she was elected with 60% of the votes, the first mayor of Brazil, Alzira Soriano Teixeira. If there was any law that prevented them from voting, there was no law that prevented them from running for office.

Despite having lost the mandate with the Revolution of 30, she would return to politics with the redemocratization of 1945 and would be elected councilor twice in a row.

1932 Electoral Code & 1934 Constitution

Leolinda de Figueiredo female vote

Pamphlet from Leolinda de Figueiredo Daltro's electoral campaign in 1933.

With the elaboration of the first Electoral Code in Brazil, in 1932, there was the creation of the Electoral Justice, of standardized elections and mandatory, secret and universal voting, including women.

With this, in the legislative elections of 1933, Brazilian women could vote and be voted for the first time. In these elections, the first federal deputy in the country was also chosen, the doctor from São Paulo Carlota de Queirós.

Incorporated into the 1934 Constitution, the female vote was extended to single women and widows who had paid work. Married women should be authorized by their husbands to vote.

The following year, the Electoral Code of 1935 specified that the vote of women who had paid activities was mandatory.

For those who did not receive a salary, however, voting was considered optional. This situation would be modified with the Electoral Code of 1965, which equalized the female vote to the male vote.

Read more about the Brazilian Constitutions.

Curiosities

  • The first head of state in independent Brazil was a woman: the Empress Leopoldine.
  • THE Princess Isabel she is considered the first senator of Brazil, as the royal princes were entitled to a seat in the Senate.
  • The Senate, however, would only have its first congressmen elected by universal suffrage in 1990 with Junia Marise (Minas Gerais) and Marluce Pinto (Roraima).
  • In 1994, Maranhão chooses by vote Roseana Sarney as the first woman to head a state.
  • In 2010, Dilma Rousseff she becomes the first woman to be president of Brazil.

read more

  • Feminism in Brazil
  • Democracy in Brazil
  • Extraordinary Women Who Made History
  • Women who made the history of Brazil
  • It was Vargas
  • Getulio Vargas
  • femicide
  • Inspiring black women

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