Carmen Diana Deere

Este libro ofrece una valiosa contribución al campo de la historia de las mujeres no solo en Ecuador, sino también en América Latina. Propone un recorrido de largo plazo que da cuenta de la agencia femenina a lo largo de los siglos XVIII a XX a partir de diversas temáticas y mediante una variedad de perspectivas. Uno de los elementos meritorios es el uso de fuentes inexploradas, como censos y procesos legales de la época colonial y republicana, o registros y demandas judiciales por la propiedad. Tales documentos permiten un acercamiento a la experiencia de las mujeres desde abajo. Los análisis son de calidad y se realizan con base en un trabajo empírico sólido y original. La obra presenta un panorama completo de las potencialidades historiográficas y de los avances de la investigación sobre historia de las mujeres en Ecuador. Marianne González Alemán Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero / CONICET

Ecuador was the first South American country to strengthen married women's property rights and recognize the political rights of women during the early twentieth century. Both occurred prior to the emergence of a women's movement demanding rights. Its Economic Emancipation of Married Women law of 1911 was part of a package of reforms enacted during the heyday of its Liberal Revolution, which included civil divorce and a constitution that did not explicitly exclude women from citizenship. This law was exceptionally generous to wives, giving them the option of managing their assets and earnings and excluding the gains these generated from community property. Among the reasons why Ecuador was the first to enact women's suffrage in 1929 was because the stronger property rights of wives did not destabilize the family and there was sufficient consensus that they were already citizens. A broad-based women's movement developed only in the 1930s to defend the rights they had achieved and to deepen the reforms, resulting in wives gaining a voice over the disposition of community property.

Uruguay's feminist movement emerged in the late teens demanding both civil and political rights rather than assuming that women must have civil capacity prior to suffrage. Feminists continued to press for both over the next decade, almost achieving them simultaneously in 1932 when both legislative chambers approved women's suffrage. However, only the Senate approved strengthening married women's property rights prior to the President closing down the Congress in an auto-coup. Subsequently, feminists developed their own proposals for reform of the marital regime, focused on attaining equal rights in marriage. Since women were now in the legislature, they drafted its 1946 law, which went furthest among the South American reforms prior to mid-century in achieving equal rights in marriage. This reform established the regime of deferred community property as the default, the joint determination of a couple's residency as well as equal parental rights over children.

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.

This chapter provides a comparative analysis of nine proposals for reform of the marital regime written by feminists and/or their organizations in five of the countries considered. It analyzes what organized women wanted and shows that where they differed most was whether they accepted the husband as the sole household head and manager of the community property. Not all feminists demanded a reform of the marital regime that would ensure fully equal rights. Most proposals centered on the more limited objective of wives maintaining the same property rights they held as single women. The chapter then summarizes the specific reforms attained in the seven countries by mid-century with regard to the marital regime, spousal inheritance rights, mothers' rights over children, civil divorce and legal separation and women's other civil capacities. It concludes by highlighting the specific feminist contributions to the reforms attained.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Venezuela undertook a few of the civil code reforms that would later be on the agenda in other countries, such as improving the inheritance rights of spouses, making the regime of separation of property an option at the time of marriage, and instituting reserved property for married women, in addition to civil divorce. Like Ecuador, it conducted these reforms in advance of significant socioeconomic change and the development of a women's movement. It was not until the transition to democracy that began in 1935 that women organized to demand greater rights. They achieved these relatively quickly, in 1942, since they had relatively less to achieve, and, moreover, their demands were less radical than feminists elsewhere. The country, nonetheless, was a pioneer in recognizing the property rights of women in consensual unions, a demand unique to Venezuelan women's groups. Employing the same broad coalition-building that led to successful civil code reform, women attained local-level suffrage shortly thereafter, and full political rights in 1947.

This book analyzes the context, process and content of the reform of married women’s property rights in seven Spanish-speaking South American countries – Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela – between 1900 and the early 1950s. It investigates how the reforms enacted earlier in the United States, England and continental Europe and national antecedents and conditions informed the ideas of feminists, jurists and politicians and shows how their interaction influenced the content of the reforms attained. It highlights the role of feminists and their organizations in achieving stronger property rights, emphasizing their proposals to reform the civil code. The book argues that while most feminists framed their arguments in maternalist terms – that they needed stronger rights to be better wives and mothers – their proposals to reform the marital regime fell along a continuum that ranged from accepting the husband as sole household head to gender equality in marriage. Since the long-run goal was to attain equal civil and political rights, the book also demonstrates how these two demands for stronger property rights and suffrage influenced their strategies and what feminists were able to achieve. This book contributes to a long-standing discussion on the relationship between socioeconomic and legal change and brings the findings of recent scholarship and a vast array of primary materials only available in Spanish to an English-speaking audience, interpreting legal concepts and debates in a manner accessible to social scientists. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, it supports the construction of a feminist legal history of marital regimes. It will be of interest to historians, legal scholars and feminists across a range of disciplines.

This chapter presents a synopsis of this seven-country study of South America, laying out the main questions. Did reforms of married women's property rights during the early twentieth century precede or follow the development of women's movements demanding rights? Was the sequencing in feminists' demands for civil and political rights similar across countries and did it matter to their success? And what did feminists want when they demanded greater civil rights, was it to retain the same property rights when they married that they held as single women or equal rights in marriage? After situating these issues in the broader literature and discussing sources, the chapter provides relevant background on factors that influenced discussions among the main actors, feminists, legal scholars and politicians. It summarizes the main features of the marital regime in the nineteenth-century South American civil codes as well as of the reforms enacted in this period in the United States, England and continental Europe. In addition, it discusses how the ideas of an emerging global feminist movement began to circulate in the region.

Although Chile led the region in women's access to higher education in the late nineteenth century, the first groups of organized women demanding rights emerged only in the late teens, along with the first legislative proposals to strengthen married women's property rights. Feminists participated in the debates that led to the first modest reforms, which allowed working wives to manage their earnings as “reserved property,” an exception within the partial community property regime, and allowed couples to choose the separation of property regime when they married. Subsequently, this option became available at any point during the marriage, but few couples chose this alternative. As a result, in contrast to neighboring countries, by mid-century few wives managed the property they brought to marriage or later inherited. Nonetheless, a 1952 reform gave wives a voice in the disposition of community property. The process of women attaining political rights was equally slow and piecemeal. They acquired these at the local level during the Great Depression and in 1949 for national elections.

The concluding chapter returns to the broader questions of the study, summarizes the main findings and considers the potential impact of these civil code reforms. South America followed two paths to reform of married women's property rights differentiated by whether these preceded or followed the development of a women's movement demanding rights and the political conjuncture. The influence of feminists on legal scholars and legislators was highly variable reflecting the heterogeneous pace of social change and political dynamics of each country. The broadest consensus was around working wives controlling their own earnings, explaining why it was the reform most uniformly adopted. Women's control over the property they brought to marriage or later inherited was more elusive, as was giving wives at least a say in the disposition of community property. Married women attained the strongest property rights in Colombia and Uruguay; the two that adopted the regime of deferred community property, in the latter, decades after women had achieved suffrage. Except in Uruguay, the strengthening of married women's property rights did not eliminate a husband's control over the person of his wife. The impact of these reforms depended on their scope, uptake and the social change to which they contributed.