Women in Revolution. Women’s groups during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.

The Carnation Revolution has been a process, started in April 1974 with the coup d’état carried out by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and concluded in November 1975. Since the end of the sixties women were organized in the Women’s Democratic Movement (MDM); between 1974 and 1976 two new women’s groups were founded, the Movement for Liberation of Women (MLM) and the Union of Antifascist and Revolutionary Women (UMAR). Other women were active in the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). The presentation will focus on the political line and role of these women’s groups during the Revolution process and will pay special attention to the Portuguese delegation that participated in the conference in Mexico City for the International Women’s Year (June-July 1975). The conference occurred in the ‘hot summer’ of 1975 in Portugal, when the country was internationally observed because of the Revolution, the end of the colonial wars and the beginning of the decolonization’s process.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giulia Strippoli (PhD in Historical Studies, University of Turin, 2012) is integrated researcher at Institute of Contemporary History, Nova University of Lisbon. She has mostly investigated on: Communist Parties, biographies of left-wing people, movements of resistance against fascism and the colonial wars, students’ movements, women and feminist movements in Europe and Africa. As a filmmaker, she made two documentaries, Apuntes feiministas (Feminist Notes, co-director: Paz Bustamante, Italy-Argentina, 2018) and Vita di Lionel (Lionel’s Life, Portugal-Italy, 2020).