Social Policies in the Centennial Years and Philanthropy in Terms of Gender: The Charitable Society

Abstract

This paper addresses the beginning of social policies in Argentina, in a historical period that covers approximately from 1880 until the advent of the first radical government of Hipólito Yrigoyen. To do this, it describes the model of the State instituted in Argentina during those years, the policies conceived in an assistance model and the institutions of that time that carried out specific interventions regarding the social universe. Within the set of institutions forged in the last decades of the nineteenth century, in response to the growing social tensions and as a product of various political, social, economic and cultural factors, it is interesting to address the role of the Charitable Society of Buenos Aires: the work carried out by this group of women belonging to the dominant sectors and their fields of intervention, which included the creation and management of health and mental health institutions (which constitutes a precedent in the management of public affairs, an area that at that time was reserved for the participation of men of ruling classes). The unprecedented action of these women, who burst onto the public stage, can retrospectively enable a gender perspective