Civil Rights for Married Women in Brazil, from 1916 through 1962. Or better, how Laws are Made

The branch of historiography that studies cultural changes relates modifications to family models and structural economical changes, such as industrialization and growth of urban life. Brazilian society, for instance, changed radically between the second half of the 19th Century and the 1950s. Even so, adjustments between legality and reality took a long time to mature in the Parliament. This article examines one aspect of such discrepancies between legal and real world: the tutorial power of husbands over their wives. In methodological terms, the article analyzes parliamentarian debates on women’s civil rights in two moments of the history of Brazilian political institutions: in the1930s and in the 1950s. It examines which forces interacted to make institutional changes concerning women in Brazil along this period a viable option