letrada

Letrada is the feminine form of letrado and refers to a person who is literate or educated. In Spanish and Portuguese, it is used to describe a woman who can read and write and who has training in the humanities or a professional field. Historically, the term has also designated members of the urban educated classes, including teachers, clerics, jurists, and other professionals who operated within literate networks.

Etymologically, letrada comes from letra (letter) and letrado, which derives from Latin littera. The feminine form letrada marks gender in languages that distinguish nouns by gender.

Today, letrada is less common in everyday speech; more often one would say mujer alfabetizada or mujer culta. In historical or literary contexts, letrada appears in descriptions of women who participate in intellectual and cultural life, or in discussions of a society’s cultura letrada, or lettered culture, during a given era.

Outside of gendered usage, letrado as masculine and letrada as feminine are part of the broader concept of a lettered culture, contrasting with oral or illiterate life. The term is encountered in scholarship about literature, education, and social history in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking contexts, where it helps describe the role of educated women within historical or cultural analyses.