Contact Admin. In the first half of the 20th century, Uruguay was a relatively educated, democratic, and politically progressive South American country, and women there used old and new media for professional and political ends.
Radical, Catholic, and liberal feminist women all utilized print media to promote their views and build support for their respective causes in publications aimed at both female and general audiences. By the late s, radio was an emerging mass medium, and women activists, journalists, and others sought to make their voices heard, literally and figuratively, on its airwaves.
Starting in , those airwaves included Radio Femenina, the first all-woman format radio station in the Western Hemisphere. One of the voices heard on Radio Femenina was Dra. By the early decades of the 20th century, Uruguay was transitioning from a country known for violence and civil war to one known for progressive social reform, relatively stable political institutions, and a comparatively urbanized and educated population.
Uruguay, especially its capital, Montevideo, attracted a share of the stream of European immigrants heading to the cities of the Atlantic seaboard, including an important contingent of political exilesβEuropean, but also Argentineβof a variety of political stripes.
Legislation during this time gave women easier access to both higher education and divorce, and in Uruguayan women were among the first in Latin America to win the right to vote in national elections. Uruguayan political culture is also famously secular: This political, social, and cultural climate fostered a vibrant and relatively open media environment for a country of its size, with a wide variety of voices making themselves heard in print media and, by the later s, on radio as well.
