Born: 11 October 1887, Argentina
Died: 30 October 1956
Country most active: Argentina
Also known as: María Teresa de Gaudino
Argentine educator, physician, and women’s rights activist María Teresa Ferrari was the first woman to become a university professor in Latin America. She also did groundbreaking research advancing women’s health, studying the effectiveness of radiation therapy instead of surgery for uterine tumors and creating a vaginoscope that revolutionized women’s health care in Brazil. She also started the Hospital Militar Central’s first maternity ward and gynecological services in 1925, which included Argentina’s first incubation services.
Ferrari completed her medical degree from the National University of Buenos Aires in 1911, but when she applied to teach at the university, she was offered a teaching position at the School of Midwifery instead. She fought for over a decade and was finally offered an alternate professorship in 1927, becoming a full professor in 1939. By that time, she had pursued advanced medical training in Europe and the United States and brought new innovations back to Argentina. She studied radiation therapy at the Curie Institute, learned to perform a Caesarean section and was the first woman to receive a diploma from the University of Paris’s medical faculty. She also founded the Argentina Federation of University Women in 1936 to fight for women’s rights. Despite her impressive career, Ferrari was forced into retirement in 1952 when she refused to support the Peronistas.
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
A particularly ironic bit of sexism is when women are excluded from fields specifically related to womanhood. In the case of María Teresa Ferrari, she was denied the opportunity to teach obstetrics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1915 because, “Despite their qualifications, for physiological and psychological reasons people of the feminine sex do not meet the required conditions to be engaged as professors in the Faculty [of Medicine].” She was allowed to teach at the School of Midwifery, but without the standing or credentials of a professorship at the university—an example of the common occurrence of female-dominated professions like midwife being undervalued compared to male-dominated ones.
In 1919, Ferrari applied again, but the decision-making body that had rejected her in 1915, the Honorable Consejo Directivo, delayed making a decision until 1925, including changing evidence and disregarding recommendations. It took another two years, at which point she had taught for two decades and dedicated fifteen years to medicine, before her application for a professorship was approved in 1927.