On the latest film I have watched ...

I've been to see Suffragette, a powerful  and rather inspiring film which brings an era to life. Set in London in 1912-13 it is centered on the fight by British working class women, the defiant women of the earliest feminist movement who made monstrual progress in achieving their goals towards equality despite being subject to enormous sacrifices.

"Deeds not words" was the motto of the Women's Social and Political union who "transformed" the society who fiercely and eagerly resisted the change and harshly punished those who fought for some of the rights we are entitled to nowadays, and very often take for granted.

 

Despite the fact that many of the characters are fictional the film is based on real events, some of which do not resonate with what the Portuguese Suffragette Movement had to face but I would nevertheless want to praise and thank three of the pioneering characters in reinvidicating the rights of women in Portugal -  Adelaide Cabete (1867-1935), the first Portuguese woman to vote in Luanda, Angola (former Portuguese colony) in 1933, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (1878-1911), the first woman voter in a Municipal election in 1911 and Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935), head of the Portuguese Suffragette Movement.

They paved the way for us, our rights as women and the establishment of equality between men and women in Portugal ...

 

Adelaide Cabete (left) and Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (right).

 

Ana de Castro Osório (left) and Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (right).

"If we now take a woman's right to vote and hold public office for granted, Suffragette reminds us that it wasn't that long when things were different." - Steve Rea of The Philadelphia enquirer.






Note:  As from the 1976 Portuguese Constitution, men and women are equal before the Law.