From incapable to writers

Female participation in the "Iguazú" and "Cosas y Hechos de Misiones"

Abstract

This article aims to study the monthly magazines "Iguazú" and "Things and Facts of Missions", of the first half of the twentieth century, considering the following questions: Is there a distinction between female and male writers in socio-labor terms? And is there a correlation between the authors, the women they wrote about and the women theme? The anticipated answer to these questions leads us to recognize the activity of these women, from two analytical categories: the external ones, which fulfill and reinforce the socially assigned classical roles and, the internal ones, who position themselves as authors and break with the epochal mandate. The need for a double theoretical and methodological anchor to contribute to the construction of the history of women leaving the private / family sphere towards the public sphere is highlighted. We limited the scale of space / time observation to the National Territory of Missions (TNM) in the first decades of the twentieth century, focusing on the trajectory of the writers Maria Chiama de Ugarte and Zelmira de la Torre de Quadri. In that sense, the gender perspective has made visible / decoded the historiographical silences regarding the specificity of their participation within the graphic media.