Virgínia Quaresma, Portugal's first female journalist

Portuguese journalist and writer Virgínia Quaresma was the first woman to work as a journalist in Portugal. In a time of great discrimination, she lived her life openly as a lesbian and was an important figure in Portugal's black feminist movement.

She was one of the first women in Portugal to graduate with a degree in Letters. She is known for her contribution to the development of modern journalism and activism for a variety of social and political causes.

Born in 1882 in Elvas, a town on the border between Portugal and Spain, she was the youngest of her parent's three children. Her father was an army officer and her mother was a domestic worker, who was descended from enslaved people from Africa.

Educated alongside her brothers, at age 18, Quaresma began studying an education course in Lisbon and later studied Letters at the University of Lisbon. Her journalist career followed, making her the first female journalist in Portugal.

From the mid-1900s, she began to publish more and more articles on women's issues, such as suffrage, access to divorce and equal pay and professions.

At the turn of the century, Quaresma was among the leading feminists in Portugal. She worked for feminist journals such as O Mundo—Jornal da Mulher, arguing for equal rights in all spheres of society. She was the principal editor of the journal Sociedade Futura (Future Society).

In 1907, she became the editor of magazine Alma Feminina, aimed specifically at female audiences.

Several years later, she was appointed to a public commission to study women's education in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.

In the mid-1910s, along with her partner Maria da Cunha, she moved to Brazil, expanding her journalist career to two countries and continents. From Brazil, Quaresma headed an organisation which focused on presenting news from the Americas to Portuguese audiences.

She returned from Brazil in 1917, following the Maria da Cunha's death. However, by the 1930s, when the Estado Novo dictatorship regime began in Portugal, Quaresma was in a relationship with Maria Torres. Fearing reprisals from the secret police, Virginia and Maria decided to move to Rio de Janeiro.

After Maria's death, Virgínia again returned to Portugal in the 1960s, where she continued to write about feminism and women's rights.

Virgínia Quaresma died in 1973, and is remembered today as one of the first figures in black feminism in Portugal and Brazil, with her name being given to street names, prizes and her image on stamps.