Maria Veleda, the pseudonym widely used by Maria Carolina Frederico Crispin (1871–1955), 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 Faro may refer to: Places Africa * Faro (department), North Province, Cameroon * Faro National Park, Cameroon Americas * Faro, Pará, Brazil, a municipality * Faro, Yukon, Canada, a town ** Faro (electoral district) ** Faro Airport (Yukon) ** ...

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

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, 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, June 15–21, 1913. As had been the case with all the preceding conferences, the location had been chosen to reflect the status of woman suffrage: a place ...

in Budapest. 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 is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...

, 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 Women human rights activists Portuguese journalists Portuguese women journalists Portuguese women writers Portuguese educators Portuguese women educators