Revolução nos campos do sul: a participação das mulheres na reforma agrária em Portugal, 1974-1976

Abstract

The Revolution of 25 April 1974 featured an extensive land occupation movement as the embodiment of agrarian reform in southern Portugal. Analysis of official documentation indicates that women were distanced from the world of rural labour at the time, but interviews with women in the district of Beja expose a different reality. Our aim in this article is to analyse the role of women in agrarian reform and understand how they created mechanisms for female emancipation in a conservative rural society. In that context, the ideological marks of the prior dictatorship - which consigned women to the home and denied them public, economic and political space - were still palpable.