What more suitable surroundings to celebrate the 90th anniversary of such a literate group as the University Women’s Club of Buenos Aires than a library (of the UCA Catholic University), the scene of the club’s main event in its anniversary year last Wednesday?
Four score and ten years is a good innings for any institution but even more for a University Women’s Club when considering that back in 1935 some of the very first generations of female students worldwide outside the state of Ohio (where Oberlin College admitted women in 1837) would still have been alive.
Those attending the celebration were greeted downstairs by Dr Jennifer Drobac, the international vice-president of the UWC, before proceeding to the first floor to hear three talks by the four panellists – all introduced by Verónica Parselis, the curator of the UCA exhibit of UWC memorabilia on display all this anniversary month of May.
Gwendolyn Díaz-Ridgeway PhD started at the beginning with the foundation of the club in 1935 by Mrs B. Beckwith, a University of Michigan graduate who brought together 35 women from 28 United States universities – 35 in ’35 like the 61 homers of Roger Maris in 1961 (apparently a coincidence). Referring to a 1956 interview with the Buenos Aires Herald, Díaz-Ridgeway pointed out that in the first generations of the Club with female participation in public, academic and professional life still minimal (only voting for the first time in 1951) the UWC meetings provided a rare and invaluable opportunity for intellectual debate.
The next talk was on the legacy of the many Argentine university women who have given their names to Puerto Madero streets. Space does not permit any further description but anybody curious about the 27 women after whom Puerto Madero streets are named just have to ask María Marta Cafiero PhD and María Inés Capurro de Castelli PhD and they will tell you all about them – an idea this newspaper may well return to in the future.
The final talk was by UCA’s María Lucia Capurro, who supplied a historical context for the year and described the contributions of female authors to the Revista Bibliográfica, a literary monthly published between 1928 and 1937, including the famous poetess Alfonsina Storni with special mention of another poetess Raquel Adler, a Jewish convert to Catholicism.
Next stop for the UWC – their centenary.
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