–OpEd–
LISBON — Disquiet has characterized women — by nature. Created to provide company to the lonely Adam, woman couldn’t resist the temptation of the forbidden. Conceived at the request of Zeus as a (poisoned) gift for men, she was ultimately the eternal torment of Pandora’s Box. The same is true today.
At the very beginning of my career as a full-time university lecturer, I got pregnant (earlier than I had planned, but still at the age of 38). I never knew if that little belly that was already visible was the reason why, at the end of the academic year, the institution no longer required me to work there.
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Another university (a Catholic one, by the way) took me in without caring that I had made it clear that I would be at home for 42 days between one semester and the next (at the time, the minimum maternity leave). On the contrary, the person hiring me, a man with decision-making power, not only trusted my professional ability but celebrated my motherhood.
When my son was born on December 24, I didn’t anticipate the maternal commitment I would have from then on. But it never crossed my mind to stay at home for three, six or nine months either: it simply wasn’t financially feasible. But I didn’t want to either. It was actually the father who took the rest of his parental leave, which was very good for him and for me.
From then on, my disquiet bothered many people: those who asked me how it had been possible to “abandon” my son when he was so small (in fact, I was only gone for three hours four times a week); why I didn’t give him a sibling (I was being “selfish”); and finally, how it was possible to have separated from his father when my son was six (again: “selfish”).
In all these micro-criticisms, my identification was reduced to woman-mother, woman-caregiver. Just as disabled people are reduced to their disability, homeless people are reduced to their homelessness, and ex-convicts are reduced to the crime they committed.
Portuguese women of disquiet
History is made up of disquieted and disquieting women. In Lisbon, their deeds have been immortalized in street names, monuments and memorials. For example, the Miradouro de Santa Catarina pays homage to Catherine of Alexandria, a 4th-century martyr who was condemned to death for protecting Christians.
In the neighborhood of Graça, the bust of Sophia de Mello Breyner transports us to her rebellious poetry, Casa Angelina Vidal, in Rua de São Gens, is named after a feminist who defended women workers, and Rua Natália Correia pays homage to one of Portugal’s most important writers.
It was also in Lisbon, in Arroios, that a woman voted for the first time in 1911. Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, the first woman surgeon, defended the right to women’s suffrage, divorce and equal education for women.
It was the stage of scandals in the eyes of the locals: foreign women smoked, drank and talked casually.
The 20th century was full of female disquiet, even in its disruptive times: after World War I, the famous war clubs that established themselves in Rua das Portas de Santo Antão — now one of the city’s most popular pedestrian streets — replicated the styles of European capitals, where women danced, smoked and had fun.
In the 1940s, when the Port of Lisbon was Europe’s only free port on the North Atlantic, thousands of refugees flocked to Lisbon, and its pastry shops, with no space to accommodate all these new clients, began to set up terraces. The first to do so, Pastelaria Suíça, was the stage of scandals in the eyes of the locals: foreign women smoked, drank and talked casually on the terrace.
Women are not housewives
It is curious that the members of the Movimento Acção Ética (Movement for Ethical Action, MAE) introduce themselves in their charter of principles as a “civic initiative of people who are disquieted in these times of accentuated ethical erosion”.
But it seems that even today, in the 21st century, there is a group of men who are rendered more fragile because of this female disquiet.
One of the proposals that the group — made up of António Bagão Félix (an economist), Paulo Otero (a lawyer), Pedro Afonso (a psychiatrist), and Victor Gil (a doctor) — say they want to make is the creation of a “housewife” statute, to be presented in May to the Portuguese parliament. The declared aim is to protect women who are at home looking after the children.
They want females to find peace and stay quiet.
Why isn’t there a similar statute for men? “Because there are things that only women can do,” Paulo Otero told the media.
Yes, there are. History is full of examples of things that only women have been able to achieve. To gain the right to vote, raise their voices, work, love other women, divorce, be free. But you see, it’s not these things that these men want to safeguard: above all, they want females to find peace and stay quiet.
And that’s why in the manifesto they appropriate a feminine quality and the symbolism given to the word “desassossego” by Fernando Pessoa, the 20th-century Portuguese poet and writer, whose “The Book of Disquiet” remains one of his most popular works.
They appropriate the term because they know that, deep down, we women remember the symbolic and digressive value of these words. And they also know that we women are so impatient and distracted that we don’t realize that the words are the same, but the meanings are different.
Here, the female ethic will continue to remain, yes, in disquiet.
