Latin American Women’s History, Mass Celebration Following Argentina’s Women’s Suffrage Law, 1947

Argentina Women's Suffrage

Photograph

Women’s suffrage celebration, Buenos Aires, 1947, documents the mass public response to Argentina’s enactment of Law 13,010, which established equal political rights for women and men and granted Argentine women the right both to vote and to stand for national political office. The Chamber of Deputies gave the legislation final approval on September 9, 1947, and President Juan Domingo Perón formally promulgated it on September 23, presenting the law to First Lady Eva Perón during a public ceremony attended by a large gathering in Buenos Aires. The photograph consequently records a defining episode in Argentine women’s political history and the culmination of decades of suffrage activism pursued by women including Julieta Lanteri, Alicia Moreau de Justo, Elvira Rawson, and others, alongside Eva Perón’s prominent advocacy during the Peronist government.

Gelatin silver press photograph. Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 26, 1947. Approximately 9 x 7 inches. The image depicts a densely packed crowd assembled outside the Presidential Palace, or Casa Rosada, in connection with the announcement of women’s suffrage, giving visual form to the unusually public character of the political milestone. The photograph shows the collective scale of the celebration rather than an isolated portrait of political leadership, preserving the presence of ordinary Argentinians gathered around the seat of national government following the recognition of women’s political rights. The law was promulgated on September 23, three days before the date carried by this press photograph; Argentine government sources identify that public ceremony as the occasion on which Perón delivered the measure symbolically to Eva Perón before the assembled crowd. As a wire-service photograph, the image was produced for rapid transmission and reproduction by newspapers, placing the photograph not only at the scene of the celebration but within the contemporary news infrastructure through which the event reached audiences beyond Buenos Aires.

Law 13,010 did not itself establish legal divorce, as stated in the earlier description; its central provision established equality of political rights between Argentine women and men. Argentina introduced absolute divorce only later, under Law 14,394 in December 1954, during Perón’s second presidency. The suffrage legislation nevertheless substantially altered women’s formal relationship to the Argentine state: after the administrative work necessary to register women as voters, more than four million women entered the electoral rolls and women participated in national elections for the first time on November 11, 1951. Eva Perón became closely identified with the measure, although official Argentine historical accounts place her advocacy within the longer work of socialist, radical, feminist, and other suffrage campaigners who had pressed for women’s political citizenship before the rise of Peronism. Light handling and age wear consistent with its use as a working press photograph; very good condition. A visually immediate contemporary record of the public celebration surrounding one of the principal expansions of women’s political rights in twentieth-century Argentina.

Item #14794

Price: $85.00