Desde la Protesta a la Propuesta:Gender politics in transition in Chile

Abstract

Throughout the 1980s, the major political debates on Latin America revolved around the transitions from military to civilian regimes and the nature of the emerging democracies. The ‘women question’ occupied a prominent position in those debates because of the central role which women had played in the opposition movements and Latin American feminists’ analyses of gender oppression within a global context of political repression. These debates have been considerably less vociferous in recent years. The silence may represent a much‐needed period of reflection on the movement's future role, but it is unnervingly reminiscent of the withdrawal from politics which followed the enfranchisement campaigns once the right to vote had been won. Was the return to democracy an end in itself? I believe it was not, but the transitions have thrown up new challenges for social movements in general and the women's movement in particular. Chile was one of the last countries in Latin America to return to civilian government. The objectives of this article on Chile are twofold: first, to analyse the impact of the women's movement on the political process during the transition to democracy, and secondly, to examine how gender politics have become institutionalized as elite sectors of the women's movement have entered the state and formal politics. Through this analysis, we can see how, and with what success gender has been incorporated into the political agenda in the period of democratic consolidation.’

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