This stamp issue evokes some of the most outstanding female characters of the beginning of the Republic, viz.: Adelaide Cabete (1867-1935), doctor, gynaecologist, teacher and a great feminist, she fought the scourges of child mortality, female alcohol abuse and prostitution. She founded the Republican League of Portuguese Women and the National Council of Portuguese Women and organised the First Feminist and Education Congress; Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935), writer, in particular of child literature, editor, educator, publicist, lecturer, defender of republican ideals. She founded the Republican League of Portuguese Women and was connected to other feminist movements; Angelina Vidal (1853-1917), teacher, journalist and propagandist of workers’ rights, namely women’s rights, self-confessed republican with public interventions of social nature; Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (1877-1911), doctor (the first female surgeon to operate at the S. José Hospital), was the first Portuguese female voter, in 1911. She was a member of several feminist organisations and director of the Feminist Propaganda Association; Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (1851-1925), novelist, distinguished herself in teaching. She was the first woman to be admitted as a professor at the Coimbra Faculty of Arts; Emília de Sousa Costa (1877-1959), writer and defender of female education. She contributed to the creation of a welfare scheme for poor female students (Caixa de Auxílio a Raparigas Estudantes Pobres), she lectured at the Central Tutory of Lisbon (Tutoria Central de Lisboa), an institution for delinquent or abandoned children and she was a member of the Central Council of the National Federation of Friends of the Children; Maria Veleda (1871-1955), ground school teacher, writer of children’s books. She was a member of the Republican League of Portuguese Women and of the Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies, being a defender of women’s emancipation and political participation; Virgínia Quaresma (1882-1973), journalist, distinguished herself through her political and social reportings, namely in the newspapers O Século and in A Capital, as well as in Brazil. She was one of the first women to get a degree from the Faculty of Arts of the Lisbon University. She was awarded the Order of St. James, (Ordem de Santiago) for outstanding services to the country during the Great War.