The New Look

The emancipation of Latin American women has hardly been encouraged by Latin American men. It was not until 1947 that Venezuela and Argentina finally conceded voting rights, 1954 before Colombia followed suit. Brazil waited until 1952 before revamping its civil code to guarantee a married woman the right to choose any profession she wished. But progress is inexorable, and every year the ladies move ahead. To many a male, it now seems they are proceeding by leaps and bounds.

Schools & Skills. In Argentina, where women now account for almost 35% of the total work force, the Federation of Business and Professional Women has grown to 400 members. Bolivia's La Paz University currently counts 543 female students, a fourfold increase since 1950; the number of women in the schools of commerce has jumped 20-fold in five years. At Caracas' Central University, girls outnumber boys 2 to 1 in dentistry, 4 to 1 in pharmacy.

A woman lawyer is no longer a surprise: Peru has some 200. Nor for that matter is a lady engineer or banker. In Rio, Lotta Macedo Scares, 54, a member of one of Brazil's oldest families, spends her days in baggy blue jeans and checkered shirt as a construction executive, bossing a $700,000 park-and-playground project bordering Guanabara Bay. Her compatriot, Sandra Cavalcanti, a Sorbonne-educated linguist, is organizing the National Housing Bank and has plans to finance several million private homes over the next 20 years. "Within three years," she vows, "the National Housing Bank will be more powerful than the Bank of Brazil."

As for politics, Brazil's deposed President Joao Goulart has reason to rue the day women got the vote. Less than a year after Goulart came to power in 1961, Schoolteacher Dona Amelia Bastos, 59, organized the "Women's Campaign for Democracy" to fight his leftist regime, sent her female followers to bombard politicians with telegrams, letters and personal visits. The climax came in Sao Paulo last March, when Dona Amelia's women staged an anti-Goulart "March with God for Freedom." It drew 800,000 marchers and was a factor in convincing Brazil's military to oust Goulart. A day after he fell, Dona Amelia did even better, drawing a record 1,000,000 people for a "March of Thanksgiving" in Rio.

Leverage for a Landslide. In Chile, where 30% of all working women now have professional or university degrees, it was the women's vote that gave Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, 53, his landslide victory over the far left in November's crucial election. Much of Frei's popularity stemmed from the infectious zeal of his late sister Irene, who died in an auto accident five weeks before the election. An ardent campaigner and organizer for the Christian Democrats, Irene won an alderman's seat in Santiago in 1963, picking up the biggest majority of any candidate.

Last month Mexico's first two women Senators took office. Uruguay and Colombia each have one woman Senator, and nearly every other country has at least one lady Deputy. Do they quietly defer to the menfolk? Certainly not. Colombia's ex-Senator Esmeralda Arboleda de Uribe, who has a TV show called Controversia in Bogota, grills political leaders on the country's touchiest issues. Costa Rica's Maria de Chittenden, 45, is a great believer in womanly wiles. She is easily the prettiest Ambassador to London's Court of St. James's, and says: "The one rule is that you mustn't criticize what men have done in the past. You must be subtle."

Latin America's women have some distance yet to go to emancipation. Ecuadorian and Colombian law still prevent a married woman--separated or not--from leaving the country without her husband's written permission. But such old-fashioned notions are dying fast, and Latin American women are determined to lay down a few rules of their own. "We know," says Colombia's Senora de Uribe, "that we have something else to offer than men--namely, the human element, more compassion. And with this, we will conquer society which for years has kept us submissive."

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