A Lifelong Fight for Women’s Emancipation
In this picture, we can see the engineer and urban planner Carmen Velasco Portinho on the construction site of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, for which she carried out the engineering work. [1] Holding a paper in her hands, and adopting a confident posture, Portinho is explaining something to a man beside her. In the background are two other men, wearing working clothes and construction helmets. The picture was taken around 1950, a time when, in Brazil, the engineering and construction working fields were generally restricted to men. But Portinho was an exception. Standing in the foreground, she clearly has the leading role: her professional achievements, as a civil engineer and urban planner, were considered equally important to those of her male colleagues. [2]
At the beginning of her career, she was in charge of the implementation of electric installation in all municipal buildings of the city of Rio de Janeiro, and conducted multiple remodellings of houses. [3] Later, she worked with her husband, Affonso Reidy, designing the living complex Prefeito Mendes de Morais as well as the headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art. In her sixties, Portinho became the director of the School of Industrial Design of Rio, and was later an advisor at the Technology and Science Centre of the State University in the same city.
To achieve her goals, Portinho had to fight hard for women’s emancipation and equal rights. In her private life, she pursued her own individual independence by starting work, as a mathematics teacher at a male boarding school, at a very early age. There, she had to confront the opposition of the Minister of Justice, who didn’t agree with her methods. Later, she had to prove herself once more against her male superiors, who challenged her to climb up a roof to fix a lightning rod of a city hall building [4]. Portinho proved her validity by effortlessly conquering this ‘masculine’ endeavour. Consequently, from that moment on, she wore trousers to work, like her male colleagues, in so doing pushing through gender equality in the working field.
On the professional level, Portinho took major decisions in her urban designs to help women gain more independence, such as including a cleaning service provided by professionals into the actual programme of the building, allowing women to dedicate their time to other matters, such as work.
Portinho also advocated women’s rights in the different institutions where she received her education, such as the Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro, where she founded the Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress. She aimed for mutual support between women, and to defy current oppressing normativism. She also established the Brazilian Association of Engineers and Architects, through which she encouraged women graduates to enter the job market. Portinho took a major step in her fight for women’s emancipation when, around the year 1930, she convinced the then-president of Brazil, Getulio Vargas, to give the right to vote, not only to literate women, but to every single adult woman in the country. [5]
Carmen Portinho was a major figure in the history of Brazilian women’s fight for autonomy. She had a diverse approach, confronting this matter through the social aspect and advocating women’s rights in her private life, but also combining it with the spatial aspect, for example including an automated collective laundry system into the design of the building, transforming, through the built environment, the socio-cultural conditions of woman.
Image Credits: Unknown.
1. Carmen Portinho at the construction site of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, 1950. “Carmen Portinho e a construção do MAM-Rj.” Mulheres na Arquitetura Brasileira. 2 Apr. 2014. Web. (Accessed 4 May 2022) Link.
2. Carmen Portinho graduated in 1924 as a civil engineer at the Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro, and read for her postgraduate qualifications as an urban planner in 1926 at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “Carmen Portinho.” Wikiwand, n.d. (Accessed 30 March 2022) Link.
3. Ghisleni, Camilla. “Carmen Portinho and the Vanguard of Modernism in Brazil.” Trans. Diogo Simões. ArchDaily, 1 February 2022. Web. (Accessed 4 May 2022) Link.
4. Wanderley, Andrea. “Série ‘Feministas, graças a Deus!’ VIII – A engenheira e urbanista Carmen Portinho (1903–2001).” Brasiliana Fotografica, 6 April 2021. Web. (Accessed 4 May 2022) Link.
5. Wanderley, Andrea. “Série ‘Feministas, graças a Deus!’ VIII – A engenheira e urbanista Carmen Portinho (1903–2001).” Brasiliana Fotografica, 6 April 2021. Web. (Accessed 4 May 2022) Link.
