Women Build the State: Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880–1955 (review)

In this well-researched and clearly written study, Guy assesses female philanthropy and feminism principally with regard to mothers and children, and the treatment of orphans in Argentina; further, she analyzes how such issues affected the rise of the welfare state from 1943 to 1952, the era of Juan and Eva Perón. Other authors have addressed these subjects, but none with Guy's range and authority. The book cannot be described as interdisciplinary, although as a historical monograph, it utilizes a large archive of case studies dealing with family social issues and orphanages. Guy's sources include material from local and national philanthropic associations and from state agencies. Her endnotes utilize a preponderance of sources written by female authors, but her bibliography of secondary works mainly lists male authors—a discrepancy illustrating the diligence and success of her quest for originality.

The six chapters of the book include discussions of female volunteerism, child welfare, and juvenile delinquency, along with surveys of social legislation in the 1930s and the transition to the welfare state in the 1940s. The author distinguishes between female philanthropists and feminists, the latter being defined as people who asserted the rights of women, including that of equal authority over children. The welfare state, examined with respect to children, mothers, and families, is defined in conventional terms as a system of state control and benefits.

Guy raises some controversial issues and makes debatable arguments, although objections will probably relate mainly to her omissions. In historically Catholic Argentina, all forms of charity and philanthropy retained a strong connection with the Church, as well as with state-founded and funded institutions. Despite its importance and centrality, the clerical angle is missing from this book. Guy reproduces a photograph of the large Irish orphanage in Buenos Aires run by nuns, but she does not analyze either this institution or any similar ones. In most countries, attempts to assimilate or redefine the traditional charity spheres of the clergy, as well as those of the lay philanthropic associations, usually accompanied the creation of the welfare state.

At times, the argument about the relationship between philanthropy, feminism, and the welfare state appears incomplete or limited, particularly with regard to feminism. On one hand, the feminists accused the philanthropists of subscribing to women's inferiority when they endorsed taking children away from mothers and placing them in orphanages. On the other hand, the feminists had an ambiguous view of the welfare state. They liked the idea of career opportunities opened up by the expansion of the state but disliked having to share any authority with a part-male bureaucracy. This argument, however, reduces the feminists to one-sided liberal types occupying the intermediate ground between the paternalists and the welfare state, but as illustrated by one of Guy's own examples, they were more heterogeneous and complex. At one point, she mentions a Uruguayan feminist proponent of both eugenics and abortion rights, who mingled progressive women's rights with Social Darwinism and proto-fascism (69).

At times, the book's arguments betray excessive narrowing and simplifying, some of it resulting from its unilateral gender emphasis. The rise of the welfare state in Argentina incorporated many issues relating to women, children, and institutions like orphanages, but it cannot be analyzed in these terms alone. At the heart of the nascent welfare state in Argentina stood the movement led by Perón, along with its project of social containment. The multifaceted components of peronista welfare politics, even during its earlier stages, embraced far more than indigenous philanthropy. They included diverse and interwoven exogenous elements: the Carta del Lavoro adopted by the Italian Fascists, aspects of the New Deal and the Four Freedoms, and Clement Atlee's Labour Party.