Domitila de Carvalho

She was born in Travanca, in the municipality of Santa Maria da Feira, in 1871.² She was the first woman to attend the University of Coimbra, where she took degrees in Mathematics, Philosophy and Medicine.¹ In 1906 she joined, with four other women doctors — Adelaide Cabete, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, Emília Patacho and Maria do Carmo Lopes — the Portuguese committee of the French association La Paix et le Désarmement par les Femmes.³

She practised medicine in Lisbon, at the National Assistance for Tuberculosis Patients, but chose teaching: she was a teacher and headmistress of the Liceu D. Maria Pia, the country’s first girls’ secondary school (liceu), which would later be called Liceu Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho.²

A monarchist and conservative, she embraced the principles of the Estado Novo (“New State”) and stood out in the small elite of women who supported nascent Salazarism; being a monarchist, she acted as go-between for Salazar and the former Queen Amélia, with whom she corresponded.² In the elections of 16 December 1934 she was elected on the National Union lists and, with Maria Cândida Parreira and Maria Guardiola, became one of the first three Portuguese women deputies. She sat in the National Assembly for two legislatures, from 1935 to 1942.¹ It was not the First Republic, which had denied women the right to vote and to be elected, that opened Parliament to them: it was Salazar’s regime, albeit in a very restricted way, because it saw them as a means of building and spreading the ideology of the Estado Novo.¹

In the Assembly, she spoke on infant mortality and was behind the compulsory courses in general hygiene and childcare in girls’ secondary schools.² In the debate on Carneiro Pacheco’s education reform, in 1936, she argued for a compulsory crucifix in primary schools, against secular education.² She died in Lisbon, in the parish of Prazeres, in 1966.²