Women in leadership. Silvia Scholtus

of the new century they had already organized several churches, congregations and institutions of education, health and publications. This was because both men and women collaborated intensively in the mission. The women, single or married, who came as missionaries fostered such a vision of commitment, effort and dedication by developing their skills and gifts that they inspired the new generations of converts.

      Let us begin to know some of those stories…

      8 Dora Barrancos, “Inferioridad jurídica y encierro doméstico [Legal Inferiority and Domestic Confinement]”, in Historia de las Mujeres en la Argentina [History of Women in Argentina], ed. by Fernanda Gil Lozano, María Gabriela Ini and Valeria Silvina Pita, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, AR: Taurus, 2000); Dora Barrancos, Mujeres en la Sociedad Argentina: Una historia de cinco siglos [Women in the Argentine Society: a History of Five Centuries] (Buenos Aires, AR: Sudamericana, 2007); María V. López Cordón and Valentina Fernández Vargas, “Mujeres y régimen jurídico en el Antiguo régimen: una realidad disociada [Women and Legal Regime in the Old Regime: a Dissociated Reality]”, in Ordenamiento jurídico y realidad social de las mujeres: Siglos xvi-xx [Legal Order and Social Reality of Women: xvi-xx Centuries] (Madrid, ES: UAM, 1986); Viviana Kugler, “Los alimentos entre cónyuges: Un estudio sobre los pleitos en la época de la Segunda Audiencia de Buenos Aires (1785-1812) [Food Between Spouses: A Study on Lawsuits at the Time of the Second Court of Buenos Aires (1785-1812)]”, Revista de Historia del Derecho 18 (1880): 183-213; Dora Barrancos, Inclusión/Exclusión: Historia con mujeres [Inclusion/Exclusion: History with Women] (Buenos Aires, AR: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002).

      9 “El más ilustrado de los comentadores del código civil [The Most Enlightened of the Commentators of the Civil Code]”, quoted by Enrique del Valle Iberlucea, El divorcio y la emancipación civil de la mujer [Divorce and Civil Emancipation of Women] (Buenos Aires, AR: Cultura y Civismo, 1919), 6.

      10 José O. Machado, Exposición y comentario al código civil argentino [Exhibition and Comment to the Argentine Civil Code], vol. 1, 360, quoted in Del Valle Iberlucea, El divorcio y la emancipación civil de la mujer, 32.

      11 Drago’s own doctoral thesis is entitled El poder marital [Marital Power] (Buenos Aires, AR: Imprenta El Diario, 1882). There were several thesis in that regard, but one of the first and most important is J. J. Urdinarrain’s, El Matrimonio [Marriage] (Buenos Aires, AR: Imprenta Especial para Obras de Pablo E. Coni, 1975). These documents are quoted in Barranco, “Inferioridad jurídica y encierro doméstico”.

      12 It was only in 1949 when political equality of men and women was complemented with legal equality of the husband and wife and the shared parental authority guaranteed by the Article 37 (II.1) of the 1949 Constitution. The text was written by Eva Perón. The military coup of 1955 revoked the Constitution, and with it the guarantee of legal equality between man and women in marriage and in the face of parental authority, reappearing the priority of man over women. The constitutional amendment of 1957 did not incorporate this constitutional guarantee. See “Eva Perón”, in Wikipedia (internet; accessed September 20, 2010), available in http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Per%C3%B3n.