Body, citizenship, subjectivity: the relation of three concepts of women education in the 19th century

Abstract

Women of the 19th century Colombian society (1848-1858), were not citizens in the full meaning of the word and did not practice liberal professions. Although they had access to many jobs, particularly those of teaching, they did their jobs from a subordinate and inferior perspective. Inequality was overwhelming and therefore women were not involved in any of the important decisions of their provinces, they did not have the right to vote, nor were they mayors or members of the town councils in their parochial districts or participated in the Congress of the Republic.

Under these circumstances, the construction of female subjectivity from the Province of Bogotá in this period took place in very precarious conditions. The participation of women in systems of power revolved around the "kingdom of home", and surely their strategies of resistance to make use of power must have included a wide range of techniques. The uncertainty in this construction of female subjectivity, must also be regarded as fluctuating depending on the position that women held in the web of social relation, set up by social conditions, territory, ethnicity, gender, age, religious and sexual option. Thus, such construction was not the same for women that had access to writing as for those who did not enroll in educational institutions. The fact that women did not get education at the elementary, secondary and university level, prevented them from having access to liberal professions such as law, medicine and theology, professions reserved exclusively for men. Even the teaching profession, which in this period was not restricted exclusively to women, was practiced in inferior conditions.

The construction of women subjectivity and citizenship was directly related to a specific conception of body, developed by different institutions: church, family, school. This essay intends to develop an analysis of the interaction among body, subjectivity and citizenship, with a view to offering elements that contribute to the understanding of these inequalities, still present in the 21st century.