Women and the vote

Abstract

The article historically addresses the place of women in Brazilian  political  thought,  drawing  on  Anne  Verjus's thesis  (2002),  which  argues  that  the  disconnection  of women  from  their  social enclaves  accompanied  the individualization of voting practice. It demonstrates that the topic – women and the vote – only began to  be a matter  of debate  with  the  advent  of  the  Republic,  a moment  when women’s  absence  from  the  act  of voting  started   to  be  justified  by sexist arguments questioning  the  electoral  capacity  of the female  sex. Previously,  women’s  political capacity  was  implicitly included in the census calculation, assessed based on the contributions of family members, whether men or women. With  the  abolition of voting  right  based  on family wealth,  suffrage  became  an individual male practice, marking the beginning of sexism as a foundation for the political exclusion of women. The article  suggests  that this  exclusion, based on sexist criteria, paved  the way for the possibility of imagining female suffrage, achieved in 1932.