Women's Day in Paraguay

Achieving gender parity in the political system is needed to uphold social justice and women's rights. According to traditional thought, women have played a more critical role in the history of Paraguay than in other Latin American states—so much so, in fact, that women have assumed the status of patriotic icons. School textbooks portray women as the principal defenders of the nation, as the bravest of the brave in repulsing those who would see Paraguay dismembered and broken. While this image constitutes a historiographical oddity, in reality women have shaped the course of events in Paraguay in some unusual ways.

Only in 1961 did women receive the right to vote, and although some female deputies were elected in the 1960s and 1970s, a full thirty years passed before a Paraguayan president named a woman as minister.