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Portugal Women
Portuguese women gained full legal equality with men
relatively recently. Until the reforms made possible by
the
Revolution of 1974, Portuguese women had notably fewer
political,
economic, or personal rights than the women of other
European
countries. In family matters, they were subordinate to
their
husbands, having to defer to male decisions about how the
children should be reared and educated. It was only in
1969 that
all married women obtained the right to obtain a passport
or
leave Portugal without their husbands' consent. The
constitution
of 1976 guaranteed Portuguese women full equality for the
first
time in Portuguese history. However, this equality was not
attained through steady progress, but rather after
reverses and
defeats.
For centuries, Portuguese women were obliged by law and
custom to be subservient to men. Women had few rights of
either a
legal or financial nature and were forced to rely on the
benevolence of their male relatives. Late in the
nineteenth
century and early in the twentieth century, some educated
persons
saw the need for women's equality and emancipation. A
small
Portuguese suffragette movement formed, and some young
women
began to receive higher educations. Shortly after the
proclamation of the First Republic in the fall of 1910,
laws were
enacted establishing legal equality in marriage, requiring
civil
marriages, freeing women of the obligation to remain with
their
husbands, and permitting divorce. However, women were
still not
allowed to manage property or to vote.
Salazar's Estado Novo meant the end to these advances.
The
constitution of 1933 proclaimed everyone equal before the
law
"except for women, the differences resulting from their
nature
and for the good of the family." Although the regime
allowed
women with a secondary education to vote (men needed only
to read
and write), it once again obliged women to remain with
their
husbands. The Concordat of 1940 between the Portuguese
government
and the Roman Catholic Church gave legal validity to
marriages
within the church and forbade divorce in such marriages.
Later
amendments to the civil code, even in the 1960s, cemented
the
husband's dominance in marriage.
The constitution of 1976 brought Portuguese women full
legal
equality. Anyone eighteen or over was granted the right to
vote,
and full equality in marriage was guaranteed. A state
entity, the
Commission on the Status of Women, was established and
from 1977
on was attached to the prime minister's office. Its task
was to
improve the position of women in Portugal and to oversee
the
protection of their rights. This entity was renamed the
Commission for Equality and Women's Rights (Comissão para
a
Igualdade e Direitos das Mulheres) in 1991.
The position of women improved as a result of these
legal
reforms. By the early 1990s, women were prominent in many
professions. Thirty-seven percent of all physicians were
women,
as were many lawyers. Slightly more than half of those
enrolled
in higher education were women. Working-class women also
made
gains. A modernizing economy meant that many women could
find
employment in offices and factories and that they had a
better
standard of living than their mothers.
Despite these significant gains, however, Portuguese
women
still had not achieved full social and economic equality.
They
remained underrepresented in most upper-level positions,
whether
public or private. Women usually held less than 10 percent
of the
seats in the country's parliament. Women were also rarely
cabinet
members or judges. In the main trade unions, women's
occupancy of
leadership positions was proportionally only half their
total
union membership, and, on the whole, working-class women
earned
less than their male counterparts.
Data as of January 1993
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