Maria Veleda, the pseudonym widely used by Maria Carolina Frederico Crispin (26 February 1871 – 8 April 1955), was a Portuguese educator, journalist and activist. One of the most effective early feminists in Portugal, she fought for the rights of women factory workers and encouraged the education of women, launching the Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies in 1907. She was a co-founder of the Republican League of Portuguese Women in 1908, later becoming President of the Board, while in 1915 she promoted the involvement of women in politics, founding the Female Association of Democratic Propaganda.

Biography

Born on 26 February 1871 in Faro, Maria Carolina Frederico Crispin was the daughter of João Diogo Frederico Crispim, a proprietor, and Carlota Perpétua da Cruz Crispim. In the early 1900s, she was active as a journalist in the south of Portugal, publishing poetry, children's stories and a booklet titled ''Emancipação Feminina'' (

Women's Emancipation A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional uteruses ...

). In 1908, while working as a teacher at the Afonso Costa School Centre in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, she created evening courses and gave educational lectures encouraging women to enter professional life or engage in politics. In particular, she called for votes for women, training and education for women, reduced working hours and access for women to all professions. She became a member of the Republican League of Portuguese Women (RLPW). The following year, on her initiative, the RLPW founded Obra Maternal, an initiative in support of the care and education of needy or abandoned children. In 1912, she was appointed to serve as a delegate for Lisbon's Childhood Surveillance Centre, a position she maintained until 1941. In June 1913, she,

Ana Augusta de Castilho Ana Augusta de Castilho (18601916) was a Portuguese feminist, teacher, propagandist, freemason, and republican activist opposed to the Portuguese monarchy. Early life Ana Augusta de Castilho was born on 16 March 1860 (some sources say 1866) in t ...

, Beatriz Pinheiro, Luthgarda de Caires and Joana de Almeida Nogueira were part of the Portuguese delegation at the

Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance The Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance met in Budapest, Hungary, 15–21 June 1913. As had been the case with all the preceding International Woman Suffrage Alliance conferences, the location had been chosen to refle ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, Hungary. In 1915, Veleda founded the Women's Democratic Propaganda Association (Associação Feminina de Propaganda Democrática), designed to encourage women to become free thinkers and fight inequality and militarism. Upset by the violence of the newly founded republican regime, she abandoned politics in 1921. Instead, she turned to

spiritualism Spiritualism may refer to: * Spiritual church movement, a group of Spiritualist churches and denominations historically based in the African-American community * Spiritualism (beliefs), a metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at leas ...

, founded the Spiritualist Group Light and Love (Grupo Espiritualista Luz e Amor), organized the Portuguese Spiritual Congress (1925), and contributed articles to the spiritualist press. Maria Veleda died in Lisbon on 8 April 1955.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Veleda, Maria 1871 births 1955 deaths People from Faro, Portugal Portuguese feminists Portuguese suffragists Portuguese human rights activists Portuguese women activists Portuguese journalists Portuguese women writers Portuguese educators Portuguese women educators 20th-century Portuguese journalists 20th-century Portuguese women journalists 19th-century Portuguese journalists 19th-century Portuguese women journalists