In Colombia legal scholars and legislators began discussions of the need to strengthen married women's property rights and adopted some minimal civil code reforms prior to the emergence of women's organizations demanding rights. This was largely because under its long period of conservative rule the country was slow to promote women's public secondary and higher education. It was not until 1930 that women first mobilized around their property rights. Nonetheless, with bipartisan consensus, in 1932 the country adopted an innovative marital regime, deferred community property, which combined separation of property during marriage with the shared division of its gains at its dissolution. Another decade passed before women began to mobilize around their political rights. While recognized as citizens in 1945, they still could not vote nor stand for office. It took another decade, in the context of ending a civil war, before women attained political rights in 1954.