Following the wars of Independence, in the early 1800’s, Latin American countries adopted a representative form of government based on a constitution. Newly independent countries weren’t immediately full-on democracies, so citizens weren’t yet given full rights. Suffrage was limited to free men who owned a certain amount of property or engaged in specific occupations. Only 5 to 10% of the population was eligible to vote and participate in the government due to anarchist, socialist, and communist parties that overruled in some countries. However, revolutions in many countries began, in which many of them were initiated because citizens longed for more rights. In the 1900’s, within an eighty-year period, the rights for humans in Latin America were a part of many movements and society overall. Universal suffrage was a phenomenon. Many different philosophers and rulers contributed different perspectives in relation to rights of the individual over this course of time. Specific historic events influenced ways in which people were deemed equal or represented. Movements of ethnic and cultural pride, involving political figures were of great importance. The involvement of other countries also significantly impacted human progression in Latin America, setting a precedent that countries in Latin American would later replicate. Within the 1900’s women strongly resisted military regimes. The struggles of women were recognized worldwide as an example of resistance to dictatorship, which was a significant moral impact. In Latin American countries, women joined together in different groups or held protests dealing with issues throughout society. In Brazil, women joined “militant motherhood, ” where they discussed how human rights were abused ... ... middle of paper ... ...rked to his advantage and he won, he had mortgaged all of his personal estate in doing so. Also when an election wasn’t contested, voters became angry because there was no one to buy their votes (130). In 1949, women were first enfranchised in Chile (206). In the 1964 presidential elections one half of the voters were women, marking a significant turn in Chile’s society. Also women demonstrated their devotion to their involvement in politics. After a long history of struggle for suffrage movements and human rights, within the late 1900s, women became significant electoral voters. Together, people joined forming grassroots movements and non-governmental organizations devoted to improving conditions for women. Initially, politics had been viewed as an exclusive masculine realm, but now all genders and races had basic human rights, including the right to vote.
As Randall explained of her experiences in Cuba, 'the Cuban Revolution proclaimed women’s equality and seemed to have made enormous strides in its direction. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) had been established at the beginning of the revolution in order to organize women around the new social goals and make their needs known to Party leadership. It quickly became a mass organization with a membership of ninety seven percent of all women over the age of fourteen. It mobilized women very effectively to an array of necessary tasks' (Lewis 1977).
Women have had it rough throughout history. Their declining position in the world started during the Neolithic revolution, into Rome, and past the Renaissance. However, at the turn of the twentieth century, women began advocating for equality no matter their governmental situation. This promotion of women's rights is evident in communist nations during the twentieth century and their fight against hundreds of years of discrimination. It can be seen that women were brainwashed into believing that their rights were equal with the male population through the use of propaganda, yet this need for liberation continued despite government inadequacy at providing these simple rights. Women in communist countries struggled for rights in the twentieth
The rise of nationalist movements and the modern nation-state has affected women’s political and economic participation and social freedoms. Based on the following documents, there were many opportunities and barriers that nationalist movements posed concerning women's rights in the twentieth century. Many women saw the opportunities of the movements accessible to women, but other women focused on the barriers and didn’t feel that the opportunities were accessible.
The Allies’ victory in WWII marked democracy’s triumph over dictatorship, and the consequences shook Latin America. Questioning why they should support the struggle for democracy in Europe and yet suffer the constraints of dictatorship at home, many Latin Americans rallied to democratize their own political structures. A group of prominent middle–class Brazilians opposed to the continuation of the Vargas dictatorship mused publicly, “If we fight against fascism at the side of the United Nations so that liberty and democracy may be restored to all people, certainly we are not asking too much in demanding for ourselves such rights and guarantees.” The times favored the democratic concepts professed by the middle class. A wave of freedom of speech, press, and assembly engulfed much of Latin America and bathed the middle class with satisfaction. New political parties emerged to represent broader segments of the population. Democracy, always a fragile plant anywhere, seemed ready to blossom throughout Latin America. Nowhere was this change more amply illustrated than in Guatemala, where Jorge Ubico ruled as dictator from 1931 until 1944. Ubico, a former minister of war, carried out unprecedented centralization of the state and repression of his opponents. Although he technically ended debt peonage, the 1934 vagrancy law required the carrying of identification cards and improved ...
Peeler, John A. Latin American Democracies. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Print.
Women had a major stake in the Mexican Revolution, which began roughly in 1910 under the reign of Porfirio Diaz, considered a dictator by many historians, who ran Mexico with an iron first for around 26 years. Under his fierce dictatorship, women of all classes did not fare well.
After gaining independence, Latin American countries had difficulty in how to govern the newly instated states. In the chaos, people took advantage of this and instated themselves as dictators. They had simply took the position from the Spanish that they tried to vanquish (class notes). The power structure remained and the people who fought for independence were largely ignored and continuously oppressed. These dictatorships had remained in power until very recently. Paraguay was finally freed from the dictatorship in 1989 (Chapter
Women throughout the suffrage act were faced with many challenges that eventually led into the leading roles of women in the world today. Suffrage leaders adopted new arguments to gain new support. Rather than insisting on the justice of women’s suffrage, or emphasizing equal rights, they spoke of the special moral and material instincts women could bring to the table. Because of these women taking leaps and boundaries, they are now a large part of America’s government, and how our country operates.
The best way to have a career in politics was to obtain a law degree, but only one woman had a law degree by the middle of the nineteenth century. Of the few women who actually were involved in politics, most of them had married a man in a position of power and eventually succeeded them after their husband 's death. Men did not want these women to have a place in the government because they thought females were too emotional and unable to make decisions. Therefore, females were not included in choosing who came into power for a long time. Even when women did gain the right to vote, men believed that that they would vote in favor of changes involving child care and education instead of voting based on class and ethnicity like men did. Many women rarely voted for their own gender because they assumed family obligations would restrict their ability to focus, and since power was portrayed as masculine, men controlling the government was
Women began to speak out against the laws that were deliberately set against them. Throughout this time period, women were denied the right to vote in all federal and most state held elections. Women struggled to achieve equality; equality as citizens, equality in the work place, and equality at home. During this time, Americans worked to fight corruption in government, reduce the power of big business, and improve society as a whole.
Hewitt, N. (2001). Re-Rooting American Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives on 1848. In C. R. McCann & S. Kim (Eds.), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (3rd ed.) (pp 31-39).
Women's suffrage refers to the right of women to participate in democratic processes through voting on the same basis as men. In the medieval and early modern periods in Europe, the right to vote was typically severely limited for all people by factors such as age, ownership of property, and gender. The development of the modern democratic state has been characterized internationally by the erosion of these various limitations following periods of collective struggle. Women's suffrage has been achieved as part of this process of modernization at different times in different national contexts, although very few nations granted women the right to vote in elections before the twentieth century (Freedman, pp. 63).
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way to the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering in the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s.
Much G. L., 2004, Democratic Politics in Latin America: New Debates and Research Frontiers, Annual Reviews
Time is a massive factor in social change -- being patient is often the key to success. Nearly 150 years after the composition of the Declaration of Independence, American women were granted suffrage in the United States (Roberts 1). Women of other races and ethnicities fought a while longer due to loopholes in the law that still hindered this right, but it was a feat for women still. Suffrage opened doors for more laws passed that freed women from the suffocating confines of misogyny and sexism. There never has been a time in history when it was not a widespread and common belief