Written Interventions by Catholic Women: Reflections on Religion and Gender in the Interwar Period

Abstract

The article proposes a journey that maps the written interventions of various Catholic women in Argentina in the interwar period, with special emphasis on their statements on the nexus between religion and gender. For this purpose, we will take into consideration the lecture given by Delfina Bunge de Gálvez in 1922 called La mujer y la vocación (Women and vocation) and then concentrate on the articles that she and other women—with recognizable or anonymous names, from high society and popular sectors—published in the cultural magazines of Catholicism, such as Noel, Ichthys, and Criterio. Our hypothesis is that not only did the Church provide a space of public legitimacy, but that Catholic women used Christian thought as an argument to defend equality and their own emancipation, and even the possibility of a Catholic feminist agenda, within a religious context that would become masculinized and invisibilize the role of women.