Clube Estefânia — São Jorge de Arroios polling station (1911)

The Clube Estefânia was founded in 1890 at no. 62 of the street that gives it its name and, in those early days, only men went there.⁴ In the election for the National Constituent Assembly, on 28 May 1911, the polling station for the parish of São Jorge de Arroios, in constituency no. 34, Eastern Lisbon, was set up here: the minutes call it the “Primary Assembly of S. Jorge de Arroios – Clube Estefânia, no. 62, 2nd District”.¹

The electoral law of 14 March 1911 gave the vote to Portuguese citizens over 21 who could read and write or were heads of family, without saying that they had to be men. Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, a doctor, a widow with a daughter in her care, met both conditions.³ The registration committee and the Ministry of the Interior refused to register her; she appealed to the courts, and Judge João Baptista de Castro, father of Ana de Castro Osório, ruled in her favour. She was registered in the parish of São Jorge de Arroios with the number 2513.²

According to that day’s report in the newspaper A Capital, the room was full. At the end of the first roll call, the chairman of the polling board, Constâncio de Oliveira, asked the board members whether he should accept Carolina’s ballot paper, as she stood there with many other ladies. One voter protested, many others turned on him, and Carolina pointed out that Article 64 of the electoral law barred from voting only those who were “insane or drunk”. At the second roll call, the secretary read out her name. “That’s me!” (Sou eu!), she answered, and handed her ballot paper to the chairman, while part of the audience applauded her. She thanked them and said that, if she were ever elected, she would know how to fulfil her mandate.¹ In the minutes, the chairman justified the vote: her name was on the electoral register, and she, “holding a diploma as she does, with a higher education degree”, was prepared “to face that responsibility”.² She was in mourning, with two white carnations in her lapel; the third, symbol of the Feminist Propaganda Association that the two women had founded, was worn by Ana de Castro Osório.¹

The Ilustração Portuguesa of 5 June called her “the only Portuguese woman voter” and published a photograph of her with Ana de Castro Osório near the polling place.²³ It was Joshua Benoliel who captured the moment for the magazine.⁵ In 1911 there were few European countries where women voted — Finland, which the Assembly of the Republic gives as the only one; and Norway, since 1907, only for those with a certain income⁹ — and the news crossed borders: foreign journalists came to Portugal to interview her.³ The door did not stay open. Carolina died in October that year, aged 33, and the electoral code of 1913 required voters to be “of the male sex”.²

The club later moved to nearby Rua Alexandre Braga, a few metres away, and at the entrance to its current premises there is a plaque with Carolina Beatriz Ângelo. It houses the Clube Estefânia Intergenerational University (UNIESTE) and the theatre company Escola de Mulheres – Oficina de Teatro (School for Women – Theatre Workshop), created by seven women, among them Fernanda Lapa, to “give women’s role in the arts the prominence it deserves”.⁴