Eva peron women's right to vote, Regardless of what you’ve seen in the musical Evita, or heard about the wife of Argentine president Juan Peron, Evita Peron did extraordinary things for children, women, the elderly and the poor.
While the rainy streets of Buenos Aires were vacant and every Argentine soul was packed in a coffee shop watching the World Cup game of Argentina against Nigeria this Saturday, I was the sole visitor at the Evita Peron museum. She is an inspiration for what women can do to change a nation and do social good for women and children, something sorely needed in the world.
I asked every taxi driver I met riding around Buenos Aires about what they thought of the Perons, and many say they were ahead of their time. Indeed, Evita during the 1940s started a program based on an organized labor movement, moved by an industrial State which insisted on social justice and brought about a revolutionary inclusion of all members of a society in which women would have a central role.
Eva Peron started out in dire poverty before coming to Buenos Aires to make it as an actress at age 15. She knew well what it felt like to starve and struggle. After marrying Peron, she was snubbed by the oligarchy who controlled the chariites, so she started her own. Evita felt that charity trapped the poor but that, “aid put the poor on equal level.”
President General Perón turned to the issue of women’s suffrage when he inaugurated the congressional session which began on June 26, 1946. There he affirmed that, “The growing intervention of women in social, economic, cultural and other activities has authorized her to take on an important place in the civic and political action of the country. The incorporation of women into our political activity, with all the rights at present given only to men, will be an unquestionable factor in the perfecting of our civic life. At an opportune time, I will have the honor of offering for your consideration a proposal for a law establishing the right to vote and other rights for women.
A proposed law for women’s right to vote was included in the first Five Year Plan, sent to Congress on October 19, 1946. Eva Perón had the capability and the will to carry out these iniciatives. Evita said on February 27, 1946, that “Argentine women have superseded the period of civil tutorials.
Women must affirm their action. Women must vote. A woman is the moral foundation of her home and she must occupy a place in the complex social framework of her people. The new necessity of organizing more extensive and reformatted groups demands it. The transformation of the concept of what it means to be a woman demands it because women have made more and more sacrifices in order to meet their obligations without asking for even minimum of rights.” On September 23, 1947, women achieved the right to vote.
Evita supervised the newly created Ministry of Health, (think Public Option) which built many new hospitals and established a successful program to eradicate diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, and malaria.Since she was raised in poverty herself, she identified with the working poor. The María Eva Duarte de Perón Welfare Foundation was established in June 1947. Financed by contributions, although often forcefully exacted, from trade unions, businesses and industrial firms, it distributed food, clothing, medicine, and money to people throughout Argentina, and occasionally disaster aid to other Latin American countries.
Her Social Aid Foundation started schools, orphanages, hospitals and homes for women, children and the elderly across the nation. She distributed thousands of cooking pots and sewing machines so that women could be self-sufficient and start their own businesses. The started the Children’s Tourism program, allowing slum children the opportunity to experience nature and visit the sea and mountains for the first time. Impressively, her Right’s of Children could be followed today. They include:
A right to food, a right to clothing, a right to sanitary conditions and health, a right to harmonious physical development, aright to education, a right to a vocation, a right to love, a right to happiness and expansion.
Elite historians write our history, so they are usually unkind to anybody bringing change to the established order or trying to redistribute wealth. Ok, so she wore a lot of pretty clothes, (lovely I’d say for we tantrists!) and Peron was a dictator. But in the age of a lot of first ladies in the White House not doing a hell of a lot, and the fact that the US government is now fascist and serves the interests of businesses rather than people, this woman could have sat back and read a few books to kids as a photo op, but instead she moved a nation and fought tirelessly for women and children. She will always be one of my greatest inspirations and truly a remarkable role model.
Women can change the world and make it a better place for women and children. Find small ways to make a difference in your family and community. Write letters to the editor of your local paper about how social programs and education have been cut, while funding for useless wars abroad continue. Teach a child, help a senior, grow a tomato. Women are a central part of a civil society in which everybody is educated, fed and healthy. Be one of them.
2 years ago
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