Women in Portugal

Women in Portugal received full legal equality with Portuguese men as mandated by Portugal's constitution of 1976, which in turn resulted from the Revolution of 1974. Women were allowed to vote for the first time in Portugal in 1931 under Salazar's Estado Novo, but not on equal terms with men. The right for women to vote was later broadened twice under the Estado Novo. The first time was in 1946 and the second time in 1968 under Marcelo Caetano, law 2137 proclaimed the equality of men and women for electoral purposes. By the early part of the 1990s, many women of Portugal became professionals, including being medical doctors and lawyers, a leap from many being merely office employees and factory workers.

Early history

The social and religious mores and norms effecting the perception of women's behavior depended on the woman's social class, not only in terms of the expectations society had of them, but because their autonomy and ability to make choices, the legal protections and dignity privilege afforded, and access to education was not available for all women. The inequality in society was not only between men and women, but also among women of differing social and economic status. These matters took their place in the social discourse beginning only in the early 1700s, and there is little evidence that the "debate on women" (French: querelle des femmes, as it is called in Europe) occupied a significant role in the public consciousness prior to the 18th century.

First Portuguese Republic

The women's movement is considered to have started with the establishment of the Conselho Nacional das Mulheres Portuguesas, which was founded in 1914 during the First Portuguese Republic.

The electoral rule of the Portuguese Republic stated the right to vote for "Portuguese citizens over 21 years of age who could read and write and were heads of families" without specifying gender.