Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda

Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda (November 4th, 1921, El Socorro, Santander-September 2nd, 1999, Bogotá) was a Colombian anthropologist who pioneered work on Colombian family and medical anthropology.

Biography

She received her education at the National Pedagogy Institute, the Escuela Normal Superior of Colombia and the National Technology Institute, where she obtained her degree in Anthropology in 1944. She pursued graduate studies in Social and Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley (1953-1954) and, in 1962, she received her PhD in Social Sciences and Economics at the National University of Pedagogy. She was named Woman of the Year in Colombia in 1967 and, a year later, she won the Alejandro Ángel Escobar Award. In her career, she has also received two medals honoring her merits, the Camilo Torres medal (1963) and another medal awarded by the interamerican congress of family (1983). Within her many accomplishments, she has also worked for the Guarnimiento foundation in two occasions. Recently, in 2015, the Colombian Bank of the Republic chose her image to appear on the $10.000 peso bill in honor of all her merits. The new bills will be available by the end of 2016.

Her work

• Familia y cultura en Colombia (1963)
• Causas culturales de la mortalidad infantil
• La medicina popular en Colombia
• Razones de un arraigo (1961)
• Organización social en la Guajira
• La familia en Colombia: estudio antropológico (1962).
• La medicina popular en Colombia: razones de su arraigo (1964).
• Estructura, función y cambio de la familia en Colombia (1976).