Women’s Political Rights, Gender, and Parliamentary Institutions in the Nineteenth Century in Latin

We are pleased to announce the publication of the dossier Women’s Political Rights, Gender, and Parliamentary Institutions in the Nineteenth Century in Latin America and Spain, edited by Laura Cucchi, Jorge Luengo and Eduardo Posada-Carbó, in Parliaments, Estates and Representation (Vol. 45, Issue 2, 2025).

Until recently, nineteenth-century Latin America was often portrayed as an era dominated by caudillos and powerful individual rulers, with political life taking place in something close to an institutional vacuum. As a result, congresses and legislatures received relatively little attention from modern historians. Yet constituent assemblies and legislatures were important centres of democratic experimentation and political representation in the new states that emerged in Spanish America and Brazil.

In recent decades, a growing body of scholarship has revisited these institutions and offered new interpretations of the characteristics and functioning of nineteenth-century congresses. This dossier contributes to that developing field by focusing on a subject that has received even less attention: the relationship between parliaments, representation and gender before women obtained formal political rights.

Although nineteenth-century parliaments, like politics more broadly, were predominantly male-dominated spaces, women were far from passive political actors. The articles in the dossier explore the diverse ways in which women engaged with parliamentary and electoral politics. In Spain, the queen participated in parliamentary life by presiding over state ceremonies. In Spanish America, women from a wide range of social backgrounds became involved in electoral politics in multiple ways, including attempts to register to vote despite formal restrictions.

Women also participated in the rebellions and insurrections that followed independence from Spanish rule. Some translated and published influential works advocating women’s rights, a subject that also entered parliamentary debates and the press. Large numbers of women petitioned congresses to express dissatisfaction, particularly regarding legislation on education and marriage, or to seek solutions to specific problems affecting their lives.

Read the dossier
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rper20/45/2