Lecture: On Feminism and Suffrage

Graziella Benghiat

1913

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The word “feminism” is interpreted in different ways. Some would grant [women] exaggerated rights. Others limit their demands to their simplest form without arriving at a proper understanding of the issues or a definition that does not rely on ambiguous and equivocal phrases. [ . . . ]

Generally even those who are truly…

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Creator Bio

Graziella Benghiat

b. Second Half of 19th Century

Born in Ottoman Aydın, Graziella Benghiat soon moved with her family to the port city of Izmir, where she studied in the Alliance Israélite Universelle school system. As is evidenced by her speech about feminism, Benghiat engaged with many of the political and intellectual questions of her day. She married the influential Ladino-language journalist and author Aleksander Benghiat, and in 1914, she edited Les Annales, a short-lived periodical, before continuing her studies in Switzerland during World War I. In 1922, Benghiat and her only son fled Izmir, first to Thessaloniki (Salonika) and then to Paris, where she became one of the earliest known certified female dentists. According to family lore, Graziella later returned to Thessaloniki, where she died at some point before the outbreak of World War II.

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