Republicprimary school teacher and nursery teacherteacher at Workshop School No. 1 (Graça)leader of the National Council of Portuguese WomenFreemason, founder of the Humanidade Lodge (1923)
Born
8 July 1888, Beja
Died
6 June 1993, Lisbon (São Mamede)
A primary school teacher and nursery teacher, she taught at Workshop School No. 1, in Graça, a school of libertarian inspiration; she sat on the organising committee of the First Feminist and Education Congress, in 1924, and on the board of the National Council of Portuguese Women.
She was born in Beja in 1888 and came to Lisbon at the age of 12.2 She trained at the Lisbon Primary Teacher Training School, whose women’s section was in Largo do Calvário, in Alcântara. In 1910 she began teaching at Workshop School No. 1, in Largo da Graça, a school of anarchist and libertarian inspiration.1
A Freemason, she took part in introducing into Portugal a branch of the French mixed Freemasonry Le Droit Humain (The Human Right) and was, in 1923, one of the founders of its Humanidade Lodge, in Lisbon, where she took the symbolic name of Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho.1 She sat on the organising committee of the First Feminist and Education Congress, which met in May 1924 in the great hall of the Lisbon Commercial Employees’ Mutual Aid Association.13 In 1928, the year of the Second Congress, she was on the board of the National Council of Portuguese Women.2 She died in Lisbon in 1993, aged 104.2
A republican doctor who only began studying after she married, she founded the National Council of Portuguese Women in 1914, chaired it for more than twenty years and made her practice in Restauradores its headquarters.
A philanthropist and feminist, she was vice-president of the National Council of Portuguese Women in 1928 and presented papers at both Feminist and Education Congresses, on assistance to women offenders and on the moral action of work.
A Lisbon writer and journalist, she was one of the figures of the National Council of Portuguese Women in the 1920s and took the paper “O voto às mulheres” (Votes for women) to the Second Feminist and Education Congress, in 1928.
Described as the first Portuguese woman notary, with an office in Alcântara, she presented a paper at the First Feminist and Education Congress, in 1924, that demanded full political equality and the right to vote for Portuguese women.
A jurist and feminist, a leader of the National Council of Portuguese Women until the Estado Novo (“New State”) closed it down in 1947. A forerunner of “legal feminism”, she championed votes for women, co-education and the rights of working women, and was part of the democratic opposition.
One of the first women to graduate in law in Portugal, she was the first to practise as a lawyer, at the Boa-Hora Court, on 14 November 1913 — five years before the law opened the profession to women.
Notes on the sources4
The day of death: 6 June 1993, according to Wikipedia; 8 June, according to João Esteves (Silêncios e Memórias).
The exact address of Workshop School No. 1, in Largo da Graça.
Whether the great hall where the 1924 congress met was that of the Palácio Vagos, which has belonged to the association since 1913.
Whether the Humanidade Lodge she helped to found in 1923, within Le Droit Humain, is the same one into which Maria Clara Correia Alves had earlier been initiated, within the Grande Oriente Lusitano: the Wikipedia biographies of the two women do not say.
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