Republicfirst woman reporter in Portugalfeminist and republicanchief editor of “Alma Feminina” (1907–1908)head of the Lisbon office of the Agência Americana de Notícias (American News Agency)
Born
28 December 1882, Elvas
Died
26 October 1973, Lisbon
Considered the first Portuguese professional woman journalist, she worked for “O Século” and “A Capital”, campaigned for divorce and for the vote, and opened the way for other women journalists, such as Maria Lamas.
She was born in Elvas on 28 December 1882 and was one of the first women to graduate from the Curso Superior de Letras (Higher Course in Letters), in 1903. She started out at the Jornal da Noite and in the “Jornal da Mulher” (Woman’s Journal) section of O Mundo, where she signed articles in defence of feminism.1 In 1907–1908 she was chief editor of the magazine Alma Feminina (Feminine Soul), which for the first time in Portugal gave prominence to a woman factory worker.12
In 1908 Manuel Guimarães took her to O Século, where she rose to head of General News and Special Reports and made reporting a noble genre. In 1910 she moved to A Capital, which Manuel Guimarães had just founded at no. 3 Rua do Norte, and rented a home right opposite the newspaper.1 A feminist and republican, she took part in the 1909 campaign for the divorce law and spoke at the general assembly of the Republican League of Portuguese Women on 26 October 1910, which approved the feminist demands to be presented to Afonso Costa. She wrote in favour of women’s right to vote and of their access to the same professions as men.1
Between 1912 and 1917 she worked in Brazil. Back in Lisbon, she headed the office of the Agência Americana de Notícias (American News Agency), on Rua António Maria Cardoso, and put it at the service of the Crusade of Portuguese Women, in aid of the maimed, the orphans and the widows of the Great War.1 In the 1920s she brought Maria Lamas into the agency, and Lamas thus became one of the country’s first professional women journalists.3 She died in Lisbon on 26 October 1973, aged 90.21
A writer, author of what is considered the first Portuguese feminist manifesto (1905), she launched the Republican League of Portuguese Women and founded, with Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, the Feminist Propaganda Association, which advocated the vote for educated women.
A doctor, the first Portuguese woman surgeon and a suffragist. A widow and “head of household”, she won in court the right to be registered as a voter and, on 28 May 1911, at the Clube Estefânia, became the first woman to vote in Portugal.
A teacher and journalist from Faro, and a single mother, she gave evening classes to illiterate women and led the Republican League of Portuguese Women, advocating unrestricted votes for women.
One of the first Portuguese women doctors, she qualified in Lisbon in 1905 and was a feminist, a republican and a freethinker: she belonged to the Portuguese Group for Feminist Studies and to the Republican League of Portuguese Women.
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.
An educationalist and writer, she championed women’s education as a condition for a more democratic society. In 1888, commissioned by the government, she studied women’s secondary education abroad; she chaired the Portuguese Peace League.
Notes on the sources2
When she began to head the Lisbon office of the Agência Americana de Notícias: Toponímia de Lisboa links it to the support for the Crusade of Portuguese Women during the Great War; Wikipedia says she only began working at the agency in 1922.
At which number on Rua do Norte she lived, and until when: Toponímia de Lisboa says only that she rented a home opposite the newspaper.
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