Women's situation before 25th April 1974

We have to keep in mind that Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship from 1926 to 1974, which means 48 years of oppression and exploitation. Portugal has all the characteristics of primitive capitalism with an underdeveloped economy still based on feudal structures. Therefore,though the situation of women in Portugal is in many ways similar to the situation of women in other countries, it has some very specific characteristics.

Housework

The time spent on housework by Portuguese women and the hardship involved in these tasks, be it peasant women, working class women or women from the petite bourgeois, is on the average much higher than in all other European countries.

There is no social security and no other social facilities such as nurseries, free time schools, youth clubs, laundries, canteens, etc. A very small percentage of women has electric appliances to help them in housework, and, worse than this is the fact that many houses in Portugal still do not have running water!

For middle class women a great part of the housework is still done by domestic servants (maids).

Waged Labour

In 1960 only 16 per cent of women over 70 years of age worked. This represented 18.2 per cent of the total active population. Most worked in the country or as office workers. After 1970 with the industrialization and the migration to town the percentage of women working increased to 23.6 per cent. Women were employed mostly in such industries as textiles, clothing, food and leather.

46.5 per cent - in services

31.9 per cent - industries

21.6 per cent - agriculture

Women's work is characterized by:

1. The fact that they are very young: from 10 to 24 years old. They leave school at a very early age in comparison with boys.
2. After the age of 25 there is a decrease of women within the working force, due to maternity, social customs, lack of social security and the male ideology that pressures women to stay at home and look after the home and children.
3. Middle aged women form a very small percentage of the waged labour, due to the absence of promotions, lack of technical preparation and the capitalist mentality of the bosses which gives preference to young, unmarried and childless women. And due also to the male prejudices of their husbands against "their" women working outside the home.
4.  Most women workers are widows, divorced or single.
5. The discrimination against women is on two levels; there are some professions to which they have no access and within some professions they have a limited function. 37.9 per cent are sales girls, office workers or in the services 32.7 per cent are industrial workers 22.2 per cent are farm workers 7 per cent are in liberal professions

Women and the Law

The laws in our country reflect the dominant ideology which is patriarchal and fascist.

In the old constitution, women were considered to be human beings, but with the exceptions due to their "nature". And so, in the laws concerning the family, the man was the "head of the family" (St. Paul's words), and had all the authority over the children who belonged to him - "paternal power". The administration of property or money was in the hands of the "head of the family". The law also stipulated that women should do all the housework, without it having any economic value so that, if the woman worked, she still had to contribute with money to the household expenses. Although women were allowed to work without the husband's consent, the husband had the right to recall her from work if he considered that she was needed at home.

We can name a few examples that show clearly the women's situation in Portugal before 25th April '74:

1. The husband had the right to kill his wife, or the father his daughter, if they were found with another man. The only penalty was six months out of the district where the murder was committed.
2. The husband and father had the right to open all letters and correspondence of their women, wives or daughters.
3. The husband could repudiate his wife if he found, at the time of the marriage, that she was not a virgin.
4. Abortion is completely forbidden and the penalty is from two to eight years in prison. Contraception was not allowed and could not be advertised.

The first two laws were revocated in 1976, two years after the coup of 25th of April 1974. The others haven't been changed.

Since the new 76 Constitution, which forbids any discrimination based on sex, many laws will have to change. But, because they are not considered a priority, they haven't, until today. All the family laws are being rewritten, but in court most of the cases are still being judged by the old code.

The right to family planning has been admitted, but the law on abortion is maintained. There is one case in court now. May 1977, of a woman denounced by her companion for the "crime" of abortion, a companion who was a comrade from a left organization. He used it as blackmail to try to get her back to live with him.

Another new advantage for women in the last year is maternity leave which has been extended to 90 days. In the work field there has been a law since 1969 that stipulates that equal salary should be paid for equal work. This law has never been put in practice, even after April 1974. The last collective workers contract, proposed by the Union of the Glass Industry, in April 1977, stipulates differentiated salaries for men and women, unqualified workers, 7,050 to women and 7,450 to men. Qualified women workers earn 7,250 which means even less than unqualified male workers.

In the farm collectives of the "Reforma Agraria" (Agrarian reform), under workers control, women's salaries are 40 per cent to 30 per cent less than men's. We think that although the 1976 Constitution can be a weapon in our hands, there still is a long way to go, if we want, at least, legal equality. In reality things are usually much worse.

Social Customs and Mentality

The image of women under the fascist ideology was as a house servant and self-denying mother of men.

Fascism in Portugal had a rural vision of society, reactionary and backward, with very rigid archaic roles for those living in it. For a long time education was in the hands of the church (Catholic Church), and even in state schools the teaching of catholic religion was compulsory with all the implications it had for the image of women. All state educational institutions were dominated by the church. The church defended the idea of illiteracy for women, Salazar himself was highly shocked when he once heard that a certain high school had decided to allow women to complete high school education.

46 per cent of the Portuguese population is illiterate, of which 70 per cent are women.

Political Struggle

As in most countries, women's participation in political life is very small.

There were some women involved in peasant revolts in the 30s and 60s, in the south of Portugal, which includes the districts that now have agrarian reform.

However, only in 1968 did strikes for salary raises take place in the north, in the fish canning and textile factories.

In 1970 "Intersindical" was formed. It included some women's trade unions represented by men.

Left political organizations had also a majority of men and the women were used to guarantee material and moral support, necessary for the hard life of the underground militant. They were now called by the CP. press the "Companions in the shadow".

Women's Situation after the 25th of April 1974 Social Struggle

The 25th of April brought with it a very strong social movement of great intensity, which reached a very large sector of production and the women in it. At the time they were 25 per cent of the working population. The whole country was hit by a strike movement: factories occupied by the workers demanding a raise in their salaries, better working conditions, holidays, etc.

In a few cases, where the struggle had a more advanced form, workers took control of production. In some cases the women were the first to set a revolutionary example: in Sogantal, a small textile factory near Lisbon, they took control of production and organized themselves in such a way that there would be a rotating system of work and equal pay for everybody. Here, as in many other cases, women fought as workers, but didn't succeed in giving a political dimension to their specific problem as women. They were attacked as women by the local population, who called them whores, the male union delegates tried to seduce them and some had to leave their husbands in order to continue the struggle. In spite of all they did not succeed in giving a political dimension to their condition as women.

In the factories and in the fields, in the agrarian reform area, women very often won the right to work the whole year round; they also got better wages, but very seldom did they succeed in having the right to talk - in the workers' assemblies - and the right to make decisions in the collective management of enterprises. Their specific demands were also forgotten: day nurseries, canteens and equal salaries for equal work. The sexist division of work prevailed. The women were the comrades' "companions".

In a few cases women tried to end salary discrimination and were opposed by their male comrades as in the case of the Via Longa brewery. The women's struggle for better housing conditions in the towns was important: women joined the neighbourhood committees, occupied houses and fought to stay in them.

In these committees (Comissoes de Moradores) women sometimes had a voice and they managed to put forward their demands for day-nurseries and health centers.

Political Activity

Very often women were involved in social issues without being connected with any specific political organization, which we consider an important sign. However, many of them joined the unions and the leftist parties, but their presence is very ambiguous. They are excluded from almost all directive positions even when they are (in the unions) 90 per cent of the members. This is the case for the trade unions in the textile industries, canning industries and electrical assembly lines, where, in the best cases, they are not more than 4 per cent in the directive committees with the exception of the pharmaceutical union. As in most other countries women are employed in the lower paid jobs.

Sexuality

• A survey made in 1975 showed that 85 per cent of men still expected women to be virgins at the time of marriage.
• Wife beating is considered normal by public opinion. Its dimension turns it into a social custom and helps to maintain women in a subservient position. Wives can get no protection from the law within the home.
• Homosexuality is a crime among men and is not even mentioned as existing between women. There isn't any kind of homosexual organization, either male or female. In Portugal all gays are in the closet.
• There are 180,000 abortions a year, for a population of a million women between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. All of them are performed in the worse health conditions. Two thousand women die every year because of these abortion conditions.
• There is no sexual information in schools, and in a general way, sex still Is a forbidden word.

Movimento de LibertaqSo das Mulheres (MLM)

The MLM to which we belong (Women's Liberation Movement) emerged immediately after the 25th of April, and had its roots in the three Maria trial.

Its composition was very heterogeneous, ranging from intellectuals to housewives, students and working class women. It was an unorganized spontaneous movement without any definite perspectives or theoretical definitions. All women knew, in a very vague way, that we wanted to fight for our liberation against capitalism and a society that was male-dominated.

We followed all the social struggles and supported women's strikes, held meetings in neighbourhood committees, raised issues like abortion, salary discrimination, housework and sexual exploitation. We weren't able to find our own form of organization and many women left the movement after the first year.

Then, for a whole year we decided to work on the contraception and abortion issue. We held several meetings in factories, neighbourhood committees and trade unions. Several women's group learned how to perform abortions by the aspiration method, taught to us by the people of the MLAC (France). At the same time we started to discuss among ourselves many of the theoretical problems of the women's movement. At the moment we are a very small group. The causes are numerous, but being unable to organize women that came to us was one of them. The political situation in Portugal at this moment is another. Repression is getting stronger, and after the enthusiasm of the first two years, the general feeling is disappointment. Inflation is growing fast, unemployment is a serious reality. Women are going home, exactly as the men shouted to us Sit the demonstration we made on the 13th January in 1975.

At the same time, there seems to be an increase in women's consciousness. We can see it in women's groups within the left with which we keep in touch. Also women are getting together here and there in the provincial towns.

The press, which up to now has been opposing us openly, - even the left press - is now quite open to our activities and articles. We should say that within the press itself some women have helped us enormously. Apart from the abortion campaign in which several women's groups were involved and that has made a petition with a few thousand names to the Assembly of the Republic, a group within the MLM has started a publishing collective. We are thinking of publishing books on feminism, women's movements and the different political currents within it. According to our analysis there is a great need for printed material in Portugal about women's struggles, not only here but all around the world.

For the moment the most urgent issue is to find a new form of women's organization and of a political theory to base its struggle on. From both solutions will come a real strategy for the building of a strong women's movement, condition "sine qua non" for a true socialist revolution.

PORTUGAL:

The Feminist Movement and the Left

The fascist ideology in Portugal permeated the entire Portuguese way of life, and it even had an influence in left organizations, which were forced to exist underground, therefore structuring themselves in a very rigid and hierarchical way. It is important to remember that the left in Portugal is highly authoritarian, stalinistic and patriarchal.

The anarchist tradition of the first Portuguese unions was strongly repressed in the first years of the dictatorship. In 1930 the CP. appeared under the influence of the Soviet Union and it was the only left organization for several years. In 1960, with the students' movement, the maoist organizations appeared.

After the 25th of April in 1974, a whole lot of left organizations came to the surface. Their perspectives about women's problems were all the same: they didn't exist. The class struggle was all that mattered and the workers' movements had all the solutions. They told women to forget themselves and fight for socialism, supporting them, that eventually they would solve all their problems (like the church has been telling us for two thousand years: forget yourselves, you will receive paradise). Their opinion about women's organizations was unanimous: it was a reactionary idea of the petite bourgeoisie. The militants (men) went even further: women were bourgeois reactionary, prostitutes and lesbians. And that was it. The maximum that one organization did for the women's movement was not talk about it.

In the case of Portugal, there is a very strong connection between factors of a patriarchal nature and factors with a fascist and capitalist nature. We are not interested in accusing leftist men of not having conceived a strategy for the liberation of women. Only revolutionary women in an autonomous movement of working women - workers, peasants, housewives and intellectual revolutionaries can do it. We criticize the Portuguese left, yes, for trying to convince us that with their leftist revolutionary strategy women would be automatically liberated. Our experience teaches us that in our struggle as women we have to deal not only with the opposition of the bourgeois, but with the opposition of the left itself, no matter how revolutionary it claims to be.

Today we can say things are a bit different. On the abortion issue leftist organizations are allowing their women to join the movement for free abortion on demand. Women's groups from the LCI and PRT (Trotskyist organizations) have come to meetings and helped through the petition campaign. Women from MES also joined us later on.

The MDM (Movimento Democratico de Mulheres), which is recognized as being under CP influence, has supported this same issue, after having stated for two years that they had no position on the matter. A women's department from Intersindical (coordinating body of the trade unions), in a congress of working women demanded some women's rights, including the right to abortion, equal pay, equal promotions, social security, etc.

Another woman's organization UMAR came out (and stayed in) the UDP (a maoist organization).

Most of these women's organizations, belonging, openly or not, to left parties haven't had much activity, since they always have to put women's interests after the ones of the male working class, and it seems they find it very difficult to deal with both at the same time.

At this very moment the MDM is getting more support from the CP, and is trying to build a women's mass movement. The last congress had 500 women members and 1000 women that were invited, amongst which were the groups already mentioned from the extreme-left and the MLM itself

Portuguese women