Explaining Social Movement Outcomes Collective Action Frames and Strategic Choices in First-And Second-Wave Feminism in Chile

COMPARATIVE
10.1177/0010414004263662
Franceschet / EXPLAINING
POLITICALSOCIAL
STUDIES
MOVEMENT
/ June 2004 OUTCOMES
EXPLAINING SOCIAL
MOVEMENT OUTCOMES
Collective Action Frames and
Strategic Choices in First- and
Second-Wave Feminism in Chile
SUSAN FRANCESCHET
Acadia University
This article compares the outcomes of first- and second-wave feminism in Chile. The author
argues that the double-militancy strategy of second-wave feminists emerged out of shifts in the
political opportunity structure that led the movement to adapt its collective action frame. First-
wave feminists had constructed a gender frame that depicted women as apolitical. In a context in
which political parties were class based and saw little need to address women’s issues, neither the
gender frame nor the political opportunity structure invited a double-militancy strategy. The con-
text for second-wave activists was different. The politicization of women’s maternal identities
altered the meaning of the maternal gender frame. Because the prodemocracy parties needed the
support of women’s movements (and female voters), they invited women’s participation. Thus,
the political opportunity structure and a more politicized gender frame encouraged a double-
militancy strategy, ultimately leading to the realization of some of the movement’s goals.
Keywords: women’s movements; social movements; political opportunity structure; collective

action frames
F irst-wave feminism in Chile (1884 to 1949), like first-wave feminism in

other parts of the world, achieved its main goal of suffrage for women yet
did not significantly reverse women’s political marginalization. In contrast,
the second-wave women’s movement, which emerged during the dictator-
ship of Augusto Pinochet (1973 to 1990), led to significant institutional
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Patricia Richards, Antonio Franceschet, and the anon-
ymous reviewers of Comparative Political Studies for their very helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this article.
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 37 No. 5, June 2004 499-530
DOI: 10.1177/0010414004263662
© 2004 Sage Publications
499
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500 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / June 2004
change in the direction of greater equality for women.1 This pattern mirrors
those that occurred in the advanced industrialized countries of Europe and
North America, despite the numerous ways in which the Chilean context differs.
The standard explanations for the greater success of second-wave feminism,
however, do not work when applied to Chile.2 In the global North, first-wave
feminism coincided with 19th- and early 20th-century industrialization. The
resulting social changes generated conflicts between women’s traditional roles
and those required by urbanization and industrialization (Chafetz, Dworkin,
& Swanson, 1990; Randall, 1987). According to Chafetz et al. (1990), first-
wave feminism was mainly reformist or ameliorative in orientation because
there was still no major demand for women’s labor. It was only in the post–
World War II era of rapid industrialization, when women entered the labor
market in growing numbers, that their direct experience of gender-based dis-
crimination produced more radical calls for women’s equality (Chafetz et al.,
1990).
Other authors highlight the spread of liberal democracy to explain second-
wave feminism’s more successful challenge to patriarchal society. Vicky
Randall (1987, p. 235) explains that feminist movements have been “most
vigorous in the West,” noting that “the full array of liberal-democratic politi-
cal rights” may be an important factor in their emergence (see also
Lovenduski, 1986, p. 61). In the United States, second-wave feminism is
clearly linked to the spread of the New Left and its emphasis on egalitarian-
ism and participatory democracy. In this environment, the sharply delineated
gender roles and stereotypes on which they were based were deemed unac-
ceptable and served as the main target of feminists.
A third common explanation for the different outcomes of first- and second-
wave feminism is that the two movements made their demands for women’s
rights in very different ways. First-wave movements, whether in Europe,
North America, or Latin America, commonly argued for women’s suffrage
by appealing to women’s difference, namely, their motherhood identities,
insisting that the virtues associated with women’s caring roles were sorely
needed in a political realm characterized by amorality (Bashevkin, 1985;
Randall, 1987; Strange, 1990). It is commonly believed, however, that the
emphasis on women’s maternal roles inhibited the emergence of more radi-
1. First-wave feminism and second-wave feminism are terms that primarily signify women’s
movements in distinct historical periods, with first-wave feminism emerging in the 19th century
and second-wave feminism emerging after the 1960s. But in addition to occupying distinct time
periods, each wave can be distinguished by a different set of concerns. A main issue for first-
wave activists was women’s suffrage, whereas second-wave feminists demanded broader
changes to patriarchal society (Banazsak, 1996, p. 837).

Franceschet / EXPLAINING SOCIAL MOVEMENT OUTCOMES 501
cal demands to transform unequal gender relations. Some therefore argue

that difference feminism, or the employment of a maternal frame, is inher-
ently conservative (see Dietz, 1992; Feijoó, 1989). Most second-wave femi-
nist movements in North America and Europe shifted their discourse from
one that emphasized women’s difference as mothers and carers to one
emphasizing women’s equality with men. The replacement of the maternal
frame with an equality discourse is viewed as the necessary step that allowed
women to challenge their exclusive association with the family and their
resulting political marginalization.
In Chile, none of these three factors accounts for second-wave feminists’
more radical demands for change or why institutional change occurred. Second-
wave feminism in Chile coincided with a period of “deindustrialization” due
to Pinochet’s reversal of previous governments’ policies of import-substitut-
ing industrialization. Second, despite Chile’s historical record of democracy
prior to 1973, the Pinochet regime was one of the region’s most closed and
repressive. Congress was closed, political parties were declared “in recess,”
and citizens took great risks when engaging in collective action and protest.
Third, unlike their counterparts in the North, the second-wave Chilean
women’s movement did not abandon but maintained the difference frame
employed by their predecessors. Second-wave activists appealed to their
motherhood roles to justify their public activism and, eventually, to argue for
political inclusion.3
In sum, industrialization, the spread of liberal democracy, and the replace-
ment of the maternal frame with an equality discourse do not explain the
more successful outcome of second-wave feminism in Chile. This article
therefore investigates the importance of alternative factors that contributed to
the different outcomes of first- and second-wave feminism. Specifically, I
argue that success in achieving institutional change that contributes to
women’s equality derives from strategic choices made by movement activists
regarding “autonomy,” “integration,” and “double militancy.” These choices,
2. Throughout this article, I equate movement “success” with institutional change that pro-
motes gender equality. It is important to acknowledge, however, that movement activists them-
selves may have very different measures of success (Beckwith, 2001b, p. 383; Smith, 2002).
Indeed, many first-wave feminists believed that their success in obtaining the vote would lead to
institutional change. I therefore recognize that I am imposing external criteria by which to evalu-
ate movement outcomes.
3. My argument in this article differs from Rita Noonan’s (1997), which also uses the con-
cepts of political opportunity structure and the collective action frame to analyze Chilean
women’s movements. Noonan argues that the dictatorship-era women’s movement replaced a
maternal frame with a feminist frame. Her analysis assumes that a maternal frame is inconsistent
with a feminist politics, an assumption that my analysis here challenges.

often summed up as the “insider”-versus-“outsider” dilemma (Gamson &

Meyer, 1996), confront all social movements at some point. But the dilemma
is especially acute (and divisive) for feminists given the pervasiveness of
women’s subordinate status on the “inside” (i.e., in the political arena).
The debates among both movement activists and scholars are often cast as
autonomy versus integration and are complicated by the ambiguity of these
terms.4 Although an autonomy strategy is taken to imply exclusive participa-
tion in the women’s movement and a conscious rejection of working through
existing institutions, integration is often depicted as entering political institu-
tions (either political parties or the state bureaucracy) and abandoning move-
ment politics. Although these two concepts are often deployed as mutually
exclusive strategies, doing so is problematic because many feminists who opt
to participate in political institutions continue to participate in the feminist
movement. In other words, activists may be simultaneously participating in
feminist groups that are separate and independent (i.e., “autonomous”) from
political institutions as well as participating in parties, national legislatures,
or state agencies. In this sense, a more accurate concept to describe the strate-
gic choices by such activists would be that of double militancy, defined by
Karen Beckwith (2000) as “the location of activist women in two political
venues, with participatory, collective identity and ideological commitments
to both” (p. 442). The concept of double militancy thus indicates activists’
concerns with promoting movement goals from the inside while still actively
participating in independent organizations. On the other hand, the concept of
integration may mean participation on the inside, and even a continuing
commitment to promote movement goals from the inside, but might not
imply ongoing participation in more than one location.
The concept of integration is also problematic because it conflates the
choice of activist location with the state’s response to movement demands
(see Beckwith, 2001b). In other words, movement activists can choose inte-
gration as a strategy only once state actors recognize the legitimacy of the
movement and decide to accept its demands for access to the state. Double
militancy as a strategic option also emerges as a choice for feminists under
fairly specific conditions related to the political opportunity structure.
Because double militancy involves participation in two locations (women’s
organizations and political parties) and the promotion of women’s gender-
based interests in the parties, it assumes the existence of a women’s move-
ment as well as political parties that at least permit (and perhaps even encour-
age) feminists to pursue some of their goals through parties. This is likely to
4. I am indebted to one of this journal’s anonymous reviewers for making this point.

occur only when parties perceive some advantages (electoral or otherwise)

from addressing women’s equality demands. Thus, the political opportunity
structure will determine the potential for feminist alliances with parties and
the very possibility of a double-militancy strategy.
Although some previous research on women’s movements focused on
either autonomy or integration as fairly exclusive factors that affect move-
ment success, more recent research, especially on Latin American move-
ments, highlights the complexity of these issues and, more importantly, the
contextual factors leading to the success of various strategies. Elisabeth
Friedman’s (2000) work on Venezuela, for example, emphasizes the role of
political parties in reproducing women’s marginalization from politics,
pointing out that “party-based activism could not be relied upon as the pri-
mary locus of women’s organizing on their own behalf” (p. 175). At the same
time, however, Friedman argues that women’s greatest successes in achiev-
ing their equality goals have occurred through the strategy of “conjunctural
coalition building,” which brings together women from a variety of locations,
both inside and outside of political institutions. Movement success, in this
context, cannot be explained in terms of either autonomy or integration but
rather the strategic construction of an alliance of differently located women.
Friedman’s work also highlights the importance of the political context, not-
ing that the success of the 1982 reform of the civil code in Venezuela partially
owes to the creation of women’s policy machinery in the state, giving femi-
nists on the outside access to sympathizers on the inside (p. 175). Thus the
choice of a movement strategy regarding double militancy needs to be linked
to changes in the political opportunity structure.
Georgina Waylen’s (2000) comparative research on Argentina and Chile
also points to the relationship between movement strategies and the political
context, specifically, differing institutional factors. She finds that Chilean
women have been rather more successful than Argentinian women because
they pressured parties during the transition and because the subsequent insti-
tutional context under democracy is more stable and resistant to frequent
reversals of previous feminist gains. In brief, political institutions are a cru-
cial variable in influencing movement strategies and, consequently,
movement outcomes.
This article builds on these ideas and seeks to push the investigation fur-
ther by linking a movement’s choice of double militancy to changes in the
political opportunity structure and the movement’s collective action frame. I
argue that the outcome of institutional change in Chile resulted from the
double-militancy strategy of second-wave activists. First-wave activists, on
the other hand, emphasized autonomy, at least prior to achieving suffrage in
1949. These strategic decisions were themselves shaped by the shifts in the

political opportunity structure. The evidence from the Chilean case shows
the importance of activists’ participation on the inside, where they can put
women’s demands on the public agenda. But to be successful in achieving
these demands, two further conditions must exist: First, feminist demands
need to be formulated by a movement that developed autonomously, a condi-
tion that allows the surfacing of demands that challenge the status quo; and
second, when activists move from the outside to the inside, the movement
must possess sufficient strength to ensure that political parties will feel com-
pelled to respond to (at least some) movement demands in relatively substan-
tive ways. This latter factor in turn will be highly conditioned by whether or
not parties perceive electoral benefits by not only incorporating women into
the parties but addressing their demands. In sum, autonomy and double mili-
tancy as strategic choices are valuable at different points in time. The utility
of either strategy will also be influenced by the political opportunity struc-
ture, particularly the availability of allies who perceive benefits from incor-
porating feminist concerns. But in addition to the influence of the political
opportunity structure on movement strategy, the movement’s collective
action frame is also relevant.
In the Chilean case, first-wave feminists portrayed women as being above
politics, which was depicted as a corrupt and amoral activity. This stance led
feminists to seek autonomy from traditional political actors and to form their
own parties. As I describe below, this strategy ultimately backfired, and, after
being enfranchised, women were left isolated in politics and without the
allies needed to effect institutional change in the direction of equality. After
the failure of this strategy, women either abandoned politics altogether or
joined the existing parties but, in the latter case, did so from a position of
weakness rather than strength. However, joining the parties did not imply
double militancy in this context but rather exclusive participation in one loca-
tion, with commitment to partisan concerns (rather than gender-based con-
cerns). In the second-wave movement, the debate over autonomy and double
militancy was fierce but was taking place in a context in which movement
activists viewed themselves as crucial participants in the political process
rather than outside of it. Hence, a substantial number of activists pursued
double militancy, bringing their feminist demands into the prodemocracy
parties during the struggle for democracy. This strategy yielded greater suc-
cesses, especially once the prodemocracy parties with whom the feminists
had allied formed the first posttransition government and perceived benefits
from incorporating women’s concerns. The government of Patricio Aylwin
proceeded to implement one of the most significant demands of the femi-
nists: the creation of an executive-level state agency to promote gender equal-
ity. The National Women’s Service (SERNAM) came into being in 1991.

With the establishment of SERNAM, the institutional context in which

gender equality is promoted changed considerably.
These arguments are developed further in the following comparison of
first- and second-wave feminism in Chile. In the analysis, I contextualize the
two movements’ strategies by linking them to the political opportunity struc-
ture and the movement’s collective action frame, both of which were very dif-
ferent in the two historical periods in which the movements emerged and
evolved. In the next section, I define these concepts and situate the Chilean
case within the conceptual framework provided by social movement theory.
The subsequent sections outline and compare the two cases, and the final sec-
tion discusses some of the more general conclusions that can be drawn from
the comparison of the two cases.
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES

AND COLLECTIVE ACTION FRAMES
Much of the research on social movements employs the concept of the

political opportunity structure, which refers to “consistent—but not neces-
sarily formal, permanent, or national—signals to social or political actors
which either encourage or discourage them to use their internal resources to
form social movements” (Tarrow, 1996, p. 54). Changes in the political
opportunity structure can also account for the successes and failures of move-
ments in different time periods in the same country (p. 55). Tarrow identifies
four features of the political opportunity structure: (a) the opening up of
access to new groups, (b) changing political alignments, (c) the presence of
influential allies, and (d) divisions within elites (pp. 54-55). Researchers of
women’s movements have emphasized the ways in which the political oppor-
tunity structure is gendered (Baldez, 2002; Beckwith, 2001b; Friedman,
2000; Macdonald, 2002). According to Friedman (2000), “women’s orga-
nizing is conditioned not only by the general political opportunities of a spe-
cific regime type or phase, but also by how these opportunities are gendered,
that is, how they incorporate the social meanings attributed to sexual differ-
ence” (p. 16). Lisa Baldez (2002) constructs a general model to account for
women’s activism as women, arguing that opportunities for such activism
emerge during moments of political realignment, when parties actively seek
out new bases of support, broader alliances, and even new bases for legiti-
macy. In these periods, women’s traditional exclusion from partisan politics
can become a (temporary) strategic advantage as parties seek to downplay
partisan differences to draw broader support or to construct alliances. But
exploiting this opportunity requires that “female political entrepreneurs

respond to such moments in gendered terms” (Baldez, 2002, p. 11), in other

words, by constructing a collective action frame that highlights women’s out-
sider status. Friedman’s research on Venezuela also points to the importance
of activists’ discursive strategies, noting that success at achieving civil code
reform in Venezuela in 1982 partly owes to feminists’ learning from past
experiences “that a political discourse that challenged gender difference
could not easily promote women’s interests” (p. 175).
The importance of the process known as “framing” is readily acknowl-
edged in the social movement literature. According to David A. Snow and
Robert D. Benford (1992), a frame “refers to an interpretive schemata that
simplifies and condenses the ‘world out there’by selectively punctuating and
encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions
within one’s present or past environment” (p. 137). Social movement activ-
ists are engaged in the construction and deployment of collective action
frames that identify situations of injustice and set out means of remedying
them (pp. 137-138). Collective action frames particular to a social movement
will normally derive some of their content from “master frames” that are
more generic and, according to Snow and Benford, “provide the grammar”
for more specific movement frames.
Recent research has introduced the notion of “gender framing” to empha-
size the ways in which movement leaders will reframe movement tactics as
well as what it means to be “men” or “women” engaged in protest activity.
According to Beckwith (2001a), “gender framing is the employment of
gendered values, symbols, beliefs, and language in defining forms of collec-
tive action” (p. 301). Beckwith uses the concept to describe the ways in which
leaders of a coal workers’ strike transformed the traditional tactics of strikers
in response to shifting state actions toward striking workers. Instead of rely-
ing on conventional tactics, which often produced violence, a gender frame
of “mining masculinities” was adapted to justify unconventional tactics such
as peaceful sit-ins. This adaptation occurred partially in response to leaders’
perceptions about the ineffectiveness of traditional tactics in a changed con-
text. Thus gender framing can be a strategic response to shifts in the political
opportunity structure. This concept is useful in the cases investigated here
because it not only allows one to identify the ideational elements of social
movements but further draws attention to the dynamic and contextual aspects
of social practices and the meanings attributed to them. The maternal or dif-
ference frame deployed by both first- and second-wave activists in Chile car-
ried a different set of meanings, which, as I argue below, led to different strat-
egies when confronted with the dilemma of autonomy versus double
militancy. This finding contributes to the social movement literature on fram-

ing, which, according to Benford and Snow (2000), is lacking in research that
connects framing processes to movement outcomes.
A focus on ideational elements alone does not explain the diverging out-
comes of first- and second-wave feminism in Chile. The shift in the gender
frame derived from both changes in the master frame—in the context of the
nation’s struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship and the politicization of
women’s protest activities—and changes in the political opportunity struc-
ture. The most important shift in the political opportunity structure for second-
wave feminists in Chile was the weakness of political parties during a critical
stage in the emergence of the movement. When the parties began to regain
their strength, they needed the support of social movements—especially the
women’s movement, given its organizational capacities. The importance of
social movements to political parties provided a crucial opportunity for
women to pursue a double-militancy strategy, because both centrist and left-
ist parties perceived benefits by incorporating feminist activists and address-
ing women’s issues. Such an alliance between feminist activists and political
parties did not materialize during the first wave because centrist and leftist
parties did not perceive any gains by appealing to feminist issues. In contrast,
it was the conservative parties that tried to appeal to newly enfranchised
women voters.
FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM IN CHILE (1884 TO 1949)
Feminism emerged as a social movement in Chile as women pursued

reforms to improve social conditions (for women, children, and the working
class) and challenged their gender-based subordination and lack of civil and
political rights. Women’s subordination was reflected in the Chilean civil
code of 1855, which was extremely patriarchal, denying married women any
control over their bodies, assets, or children (Covarrubias, 1978, p. 617).
Women’s subordination was linked to the prevailing gender ideology,
which associated women exclusively with the “private” domain of the family.
The social roles associated with motherhood formed the basis of the gender
ideology in Chile. Women, as mothers, are expected to act for others, mainly
their children, but women’s caring responsibilities often extend to their com-
munities as well. Closely bound up with the motherhood identity is women’s
supposed boundless capacity for self-sacrifice and for putting the needs of
others before their own. A Chilean newspaper article in 1915 noted that “the
greatest merit of the woman throughout the ages is her capacity to love and
her maternal instinct, qualities which the Chilean woman greatly demon-

strates” (quoted in Gaviola, Jiles, Lopresti, & Rojas, 1986, p. 21). This gen-
der ideology served as the master frame that shaped the way first-wave femi-
nists subsequently framed the goals of their movement.
The emergence of women’s activism in this period is influenced by the
political opportunity structure, namely, the expansion of the state following
the collapse of the oligarchy and the emergence of Arturo Alessandri’s
reformist government in 1932. During this period, a (limited) welfare state
emerged, and the public sector took control of large portions of the economy.
Women became “public” actors in the first few decades of the 20th century
because the changing economic and social landscape increasingly necessi-
tated their entrance into the labor force (Covarrubias, 1978, p. 621). A mainly
rural economy was gradually transformed into an urban, industrial economy,
resulting in a prolonged period of rural to urban migration. In many displaced
families, women played the main subsistence role, earning income through
domestic service, selling food, drinks, and handicrafts, or renting out parts of
their dwellings as shelter for other new migrants (Gaviola et al., 1986; Valdés
& Weinstein, 1993). Middle-class women began to see a “professionali-
zation” of their social roles as caregivers as the state took a greater interest in
the health, education, and well-being of its citizens (Lavrin, 1995, p. 296). In
this context, when women organized to demand change, they constructed a
gender frame on the basis of women’s maternal roles.
THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
In their history of the Chilean suffrage movement, Edda Gaviola, Ximena

Jiles, Lorella Lopresti, and Claudia Rojas (1986, p. 39) point to the years
between 1913 and 1925 as laying the foundations for first-wave feminism.
Working-class women’s organizations were emerging in the north, where the
mining sector dominated, and middle- and upper-class urban women were
organizing as well. By 1915 in Santiago, there were two women’s organiza-
tions: the Señoras’ Club and the Lecture Circle. In addition to discussing
poetry, art, and literature, these groups organized discussions on women’s
political rights (p. 34). Civil code reform, namely, women’s greater control
over marital assets, and women’s suffrage constituted the main goals for
organized women.
Despite women’s political exclusion, parties were concerned with mobi-
lizing women, and many of them established separate women’s wings to that
end. The Radical Party recruited women members as early as 1888 and set up
a women’s wing in 1934 (Chaney, 1979, p. 93). Leading feminist Amanda
Labarca was an active member of this party. The Socialist Party established a
women’s wing in 1933. The main parties on the Right—the Conservative

Party and the Liberal Party—both created separate women’s wings. The
Conservative Party’s women’s wing (created in 1941) served mainly as a
vehicle for women’s charity work with the poor (p. 94). Although women
therefore had a presence in political parties, their separation into women’s
wings kept them marginalized and out of the parties’ decision-making
structures.
Although some feminists had links to traditional parties, feminists for the
most part sought to portray themselves—and women overall—as apolitical
and, most importantly, above partisan politics. Women’s movements of this
era opted for a strategy of autonomy. This strategy was not, however, pursued
out of a fear of co-optation but because their gender frame led them to draw a
sharp distinction between (masculine) politics—a corrupt affair that was all
about the pursuit of power for partisan purposes—and feminine activism,
which sought neither power nor prestige but the betterment of society. Draw-
ing on the master frame of the maternal gender ideology, the suffrage move-
ment’s collective action frame depicted women’s lack of voting rights as
problematic precisely because of their maternal qualities, which would pro-
mote virtue in politics. This gender frame also led most feminists to shun tra-
ditional political parties and to form their own parties. Two women’s parties
were formed in the 1920s, the Feminine Civic Party and the Feminine Demo-
cratic Party. Feminists in these parties took pains to assert their autonomy
from partisan actors. The Feminine Civic Party declared its independence
from any political or religious groupings in its statutes (Covarrubias, 1978, p.
628). María de la Cruz, the party’s founder, believed that women must be able
to pursue their aims independently of men and needed their own party to do
so (p. 639).
In addition to the creation of women’s parties, women’s suffrage groups
also formed in the 1930s. The most important of these was the Movement for
Emancipation of the Women of Chile (MEMCH), formed in 1935. In its dec-
laration of principles, MEMCH described itself as “a wide organization of
national character that groups women of all ideological tendencies that are
disposed to struggle for the social, economic, and juridical liberation of
women” (quoted in Gaviola et al., 1986, p. 43). MEMCH also drew on exist-
ing progressive leftist discourse and was a strong promoter of the rights of
working women. Despite the influence of leftist ideology on MEMCH, it
consciously avoided the prevailing language of politics, which was essen-
tially the language of class struggle (Lavrin, 1995, p. 310). Although
MEMCH was founded mostly by women from the Left, women in the organi-
zation, like those in the women’s parties, sought autonomy from what they
viewed as the corrupt world of masculine politics. Its founder, Elena
Caffarena, explains,

the fact of being apolitical doesn’t deny that women be trained for and enter
into the political parties, but it is an error to give to MEMCH a political ten-
dency. Each group has its function: the class struggle is for the parties, and for
the feminine struggles, the feminine organizations like MEMCH. (quoted in
Covarrubias, 1978, p. 632)
Her words demonstrate that women’s equality struggles were not considered
“political,” a position that complicated feminists’ relations with partisan
actors.
The struggle for suffrage finally gained a mass following in 1944, when
MEMCH, along with another umbrella group created that same year, the
Chilean Federation of Feminine Institutions (FECHIF), began to mobilize
massively for women’s political rights. The bill granting women the right to
vote and be elected nationally was finally passed in 1948. The delayed timing
had less to do with massive opposition to women’s suffrage than with the fact
that legislation on women’s suffrage was not considered a high priority by
presidents or the political parties in Congress. Although the strategy of femi-
nist activists was to try to co-opt leading political figures to the cause of
women’s enfranchisement, they did so on an individual level. That is, activ-
ists tried to gain the support of individual political leaders but not necessarily
the political parties of which the individuals were part. Consequently,
although a succession of Chilean presidents favored women’s suffrage (e.g.,
Alessandri, Aguirre Cerda, and González Videla), political parties as collec-
tivities—especially those on the Left—wavered in their support, viewing it
as potentially risky (Covarrubias, 1978, p. 647). Parties on the Left were
ambivalent about enfranchising women at the national level because the deci-
sion to permit women to vote in municipal elections in 1935 confirmed
women’s electoral support for conservative parties (Gaviola et al., 1986, p.
61). This partly explains why women’s suffrage legislation often languished
in Congress, being neither fully supported nor rejected outright by political
parties.5 After a new bill on women’s suffrage was introduced in 1945, it too
was making its way through Congress very slowly. It was ultimately sped up
and passed when it received a “simple urgency” classification from the
president (Gaviola et al., 1986, p. 73).
5. Legislation often takes years to make its way through Congress and the committee system
in Chile. One of the executive’s most important powers is the capacity to declare certain bills
“urgent,” which requires their discussion within a specified time period. The Chilean executive,
therefore, has important “agenda-setting” powers. Women’s rights legislation, however, is sel-
dom declared urgent.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES AND THE

OUTCOME OF FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM: WOMEN’S
INCORPORATION AS “MOBILIZED MOTHERS”
First-wave feminists in Chile achieved the goal of women’s enfranchise-

ment by 1949, but no other substantive changes to gender relations occurred.
Indeed, instead of being incorporated into Chilean politics as equal citizens,
women were brought into politics and national development as mobilized
mothers. In a political context in which parties perceived few benefits from
promoting women’s equality, feminists’ insistence on autonomy and the cre-
ation of women’s parties generated problems for women. There was an inher-
ent contradiction in the nature of women’s parties in this period. Women’s
parties were engaged in the political process while claiming to be “apolitical”
(Lavrin, 1995, pp. 46-47). According to Lavrin (1995), “refusing to accept
politics on the same premises as men perpetuated the idea of female political
leaders as oddities and lessened their potential for exerting power in national
politics” (pp. 46-47). In a similar vein, Valdés and Weinstein (1993) explain
that once women entered the messy world of politics, they “felt incapable of
carrying forward their own form of doing politics” (pp. 51-52). In framing
their motivations as “morally pure,” women were, in effect, putting them-
selves and the issues they pursued above politics. This strategy backfired,
however. Women’s parties collapsed, and when women the entered the exist-
ing parties, they did so from a position of weakness that inhibited the
promotion of feminist goals.
Prior to winning the vote, women’s parties worked at mobilizing women
and pressuring political leaders to pass women’s suffrage. After 1949, these
parties participated in elections, and the leader of the Chilean Feminine Party
(PFCH), María de la Cruz, was elected to the Senate. Through this party, fem-
inists sought to practice an autonomous form of politics, rooted in women’s
political nature (i.e., moral, less prone to corruption, and not limited to the
partisan left-right ideological divisions). When women were confronted with
having to practice politics in the political arena, however, they opened them-
selves up to greater scrutiny and criticism because of the high standards they
had set for themselves. According to Julieta Kirkwood (1986), “starting from
the moment in which it began to act in ‘politics’ the PFCH had to confront
adversaries, make alliances, endure internal divisions, [and] initiate ideologi-
cal debates with other feminist groups and politicians” (p. 153). The party
fell apart after María de la Cruz became embroiled in a scandal. Three female
parliamentarians from outside the party presented charges of “dishonorable
conduct” against Cruz, claiming that she was involved in an illicit and illegal

business scheme. The leader of the only women’s political party gave up her
Senate seat in disgrace.
The women’s parties immediately collapsed, signaling the end of an
autonomous feminist politics. The umbrella organizations that had been
formed (FECHIF and MEMCH) grew weaker, and, because they had never
tried to develop alliances with political parties, they had no external bases of
support (Covarrubias, 1978, p. 645). At this point, the women’s movement
collapsed, and those women who wished to remain active entered existing
parties. Unlike second-wave feminists, however, these women did not prac-
tice double militancy, which would have involved continued participation in
women’s organizations and the promotion of women’s goals in the parties.
Double militancy was not an option for first-wave feminists because the
political opportunity structure did not invite such a strategy. The centrist and
leftist parties in which many women participated were ideological and class
based, as was the language of Chilean politics in that era. Centrist and leftist
parties did not perceive electoral benefits from addressing women’s gender-
based demands. Because women had not developed cooperative relations or
alliances with parties up to that point, they were incorporated into partisan
organizations from a position of weakness rather than strength. Conse-
quently, Gaviola, Largo, and Palestro (1994, p. 21) refer to this period as the
“illusion of integration,” and Kirkwood (1986) calls it the period of “feminist
silence” (p. 77).
Feminist silence in the political parties meant that neither parties nor gov-
ernments promoted policies to undermine women’s subordinate status in
politics, the workplace, or the family. Despite increasing attention to women
as voters and, under the governments of Eduardo Frei (1964 to 1970) and Sal-
vador Allende (1970 to 1973), attention to women’s roles as providers and
the caretakers of families and communities, no attempt was made to increase
women’s access to the political arena or to give women more legal control
over their affairs (either their marital assets or their own bodies). Instead,
women were incorporated into the political reform and national development
projects of both Frei and Allende as mobilized mothers. Women became the
link through which state services were delivered to society (Serrano, 1992)
and whose caretaking activities in the home and community would contrib-
ute to the country’s development goals. The main vehicle for incorporating
women was the Mothers’ Centers, originally Catholic Church–affiliated
charitable organizations in which middle- and upper-class women worked
with poor women in the poblaciones (shantytowns) (Valdés & Weinstein,
1993). As the Mothers’ Centers spread, Eduardo Frei’s government brought
them under state control in 1964. For the Allende government, the Mothers’
Centers became the primary vehicle through which women were mobilized

around the project of building socialism in Chile (Chaney, 1979; Kirkwood,

1986). In sum, first-wave feminism did not produce the kind of institutional
change that could contribute to gender equality. That task fell to second-wave
feminists.
SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM
IN CHILE (1973 TO PRESENT)
Women’s public activism reemerged in the context of General Pinochet’s

dictatorship (1973 to 1990), a context of extreme political repression, eco-
nomic crisis, and, most importantly, the relative weakness of partisan actors.
Although the movement was extremely diverse, composed of middle-class
and professional feminists, poor and working-class female activists in the
shantytowns, and women primarily motivated to activism by the “disappear-
ance” of their husbands and/or children, the movement ultimately displayed
considerable unity of purpose.6 By the mid-1980s, the main goal was, of
course, the defeat of the dictatorship. To this goal, however, women added
their demands for the return of a more meaningful democracy for women.
The slogan that became the rallying cry of the movement was “Democracy in
the country and in the home!”
Most importantly, as described below, women’s relationship to political
parties was very different in this period. Because the main feature of the polit-
ical opportunity structure was the weakness of parties and relative strength of
social movements, feminists developed demands that were quite radical in
their challenging of traditional politics. They brought these demands into the
centrist and leftist parties that were fighting for democracy from a position of
strength and succeeded in pressuring the parties to adopt some of their main
demands. All the while, women continued to employ a frame of women’s dif-
ference, although one in which women’s motherhood identities were inter-
preted differently given the changed political and economic environment. By
the 1980s, the master frame that valorized women’s motherhood identities
was still in place, but now, these very identities were linked to the struggle for
6. Although the movement that emerged in the 1980s may be more accurately described as a
“women’s movement” than a “feminist movement” (to the extent that a majority of the partici-
pants would have resisted the label feminist), a number of the goals of women’s organizations,
and indeed much of their rhetoric, is decidedly feminist in content. This factor, in addition to the
high levels of interaction among women from different organizations, means that the distinction
often made between feminist movements and women’s movements is difficult to apply to the
Chilean movement in the 1980s.

democracy and social justice, given that women were on the frontlines of
these struggles. Women’s identities at this point were very much politicized,
in contrast to the era of the first-wave movement, when the movement’s gen-
der frame depicted women as apolitical. Within the context of a motherhood
identity that was more political, the difference frame could be put to radical
purposes and used to make demands for gender equality in the political arena.
Also, the more clearly political gender frame lent strength to the arguments
for double militancy, although the debates among feminists on this issue
were fierce by the late 1980s. In the remainder of this section, I discuss these
developments and their impact on the outcome of the second-wave feminist
movement in Chile.
Women’s human rights groups were the first actors to publicly denounce
dictatorships and their actions. As elsewhere in Latin America, their mother-
hood identities served as both a justification for their activism and, at least
initially, a shield that protected them against repression by a state that valo-
rized women’s motherhood roles (Alvarez, 1990; Chuchryk, 1989a; Feijoó,
1989). The rhetoric of the human rights groups played on the inherent contra-
diction between the military’s discourse and its actions: Although the mili-
tary claimed to place the highest value on the family—the very foundation of
the social order—its repression violated the integrity of the family in a very
extreme manner (Valenzuela, 1991, p. 167). As during the first-wave move-
ments, women used the discourse of motherhood to justify their actions and
to mobilize other women to join in their efforts. Patricia Chuchryk (1989b,
p. 140) interviewed numerous women from the Group of Relatives of the
Detained-Disappeared and found that women were motivated to act because
they felt obligations as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters.
In addition to organizing as human rights groups, women organized in
response to economic hardships. Again, in a pattern common throughout
Latin America, women’s maternal roles served as the main basis for activism
in the subsistence organizations in poor neighborhoods. Subsistence organi-
zations, known as “popular economic organizations” (OEPs), emerged out of
the economic crisis induced by Pinochet’s extreme neoliberal restructuring
project, which left thousands unemployed and cut off from previously pub-
licly available social services. The membership of the OEPs was overwhelm-
ingly female in part because they grew out of women’s organizational experi-
ences in the Mothers’ Centers (Valdés & Weinstein, 1993, p. 145).
The context created by the dictatorship was considerably different from
previous instances in which poor and working-class women undertook col-
lective action, because this time, women’s goals expanded as they linked
their daily problems to the dictatorship and a society that subordinated
women. Women’s groups based in the shantytowns, which were at first

mainly concerned with survival issues, were also more autonomous than
some of the other women’s groups (human rights and political groups with
links to parties) and hence more likely to be critical of traditional Chilean
political practice (Valenzuela, 1991, p. 170).
In this period, feminist politics emerged out of the interaction among
women from different classes and with different partisan identities in organi-
zations formed by women party militants. Because the bulk of the repression
fell on political parties, they were greatly weakened. Thus with many male
leaders dead, in jail, or in exile, female militants created their own organiza-
tions, some with links to the underground parties and others more independ-
ent. In the groups with links to political parties, women enjoyed a degree of
autonomy from the parties’ leadership because of the repression. This gave
female activists the necessary space to reflect critically on traditional politi-
cal practice. Feminists such as Kirkwood (1988) began to argue that democ-
racy had never really existed for women in Chile. Kirkwood explained that
Chilean democracy’s proclaimed values of equality, nondiscrimination, and
liberty were never experienced by women, who, relegated to the private
sphere, were subjected to the undisputed authority of the male heads of
households. Hence, “the daily experience for women is authoritarianism”
(pp. 19-20). Some examples of women’s groups with links to political parties
or actors include the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Woman,
created by women from the Revolutionary Left Movement; Women of Chile,
formed by women with links to the Communist Party; and the Chilean Union
of Women, created by women from the Socialist Party (Gaviola et al., 1994).
In their early years, these groups, along with other organizations formed
by women, served as mechanisms for reconstructing relationships between
political leaders and their social bases, relationships that the dictatorship
wanted to destroy completely. In this sense, women’s groups were crucial in
taking the first steps toward rebuilding a sense of active political citizenship
in a country where apolitical passivity was a virtue, according to the dictator-
ship. This helped politicize women’s maternal identities, given that women
so often justified their activism by appealing to their social roles as mothers.
In other words, women’s activities in defense of family and community rela-
tionships were politicized because of the repressive environment created by
the dictatorship and the abrupt closure of the traditional political arena. The
political opportunity structure permitted the redefinition of “politics” by
social movement actors, particularly women, who linked their daily struggles
to the absence of democracy.
This period also witnessed the rebirth of an explicitly and self-defined
feminist movement in Chile. Many explanations have been offered for why
feminism (re)emerged in such a presumably hostile setting. Valdés and

Weinstein (1993) credit the initiation of the United Nations (UN) Decade for
Women (in 1975) with reigniting Chilean feminism by focusing attention on
women’s issues in development and making international funding available.
The number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Chile expanded
rapidly under authoritarianism as professionals in the government and in uni-
versities lost their jobs and responded by creating NGOs. Given the concern
with gender issues sparked by the UN Decade for Women, international aid
agencies favored NGOs that devoted attention to women’s concerns. By
1987, there were 87 NGOs or other support agencies that had gender focuses
(either academically or in terms of social services) (pp. 194-195). Others
emphasize the importance of the exile experience, particularly for political
women (Chuchryk, 1989a; Gaviola et al., 1994; Serrano, 1990; Shayne, in
press; Valenzuela, 1991). Many women who had been politically active in the
Frei and Allende years were exiled in Europe, where they came into contact
with feminist organizing and ideas.
A final factor leading to the spread of feminism in this era was the relation-
ships and links forged among variously situated women. These relationships
were initiated largely because middle-class and professional women work-
ing in the NGOs received international funding to carry out work (including
consciousness-raising activities) with poor and working-class women in the
shantytowns. Feminists organized workshops and various types of sessions
for interchange and conscientización (consciousness-raising) with poor
women. Through these interchanges, women’s groups in the popular sectors
began to expand their own activities, and most groups added workshops on
sexuality, personal development, and family relations to their schedules of
activities. In this way, a “feminist curriculum” spread throughout women’s
organizations, a curriculum that addressed day-to-day issues from a feminist
perspective that included an awareness of both the gendered and class bases
of the struggles of popular sector women (Valdés & Weinstein, 1993, p. 196).
By the mid-1980s, one can speak of a united, broad-based, and multiclass
women’s movement with a decidedly feminist orientation because organized
women in this period shared an overarching common goal—the defeat of the
dictatorship—but also because a common outlook was emerging among
women about their experiences of gender-based subordination. The shared
goal of defeating Pinochet led women’s groups to come together to form
larger networks, and their common outlook led to elaborating a set of
demands that went beyond merely the return of democracy to include the pro-
motion of a women’s rights agenda. Women began to think critically about
how democracy had been practiced in Chilean politics and to argue for a more
inclusive democracy. A key portion of the movement decided to promote

these demands on the inside, that is, from within the political parties
constituting the prodemocracy movement.
This strategy was available to activists because of changes in the political
opportunity structure that invited women’s double militancy. When the par-
ties of the Center and the Left finally overcame their earlier disagreements
and forged a united front to oppose the dictatorship, they needed the support
of the social movements that initiated the opposition to Pinochet. This
became even more critical once it was clear that opposition parties would
have to work together to mobilize Chileans to vote “no” in the 1988 plebiscite
on the continuation of Pinochet’s rule for another 8 years. The first challenge
for the prodemocracy parties was to convince Chileans to register to vote, a
challenge to which women’s organizations responded vigorously. Female
activists in the prodemocracy movement launched a massive campaign to
register voters, and in the end, there were over 200,000 more women regis-
tered to vote than men (Baldez, 2002, p. 170). More significantly, the plebi-
scite results indicated a gender gap: 47% of women voted “yes” compared
with only 40% of men. All parties thus sought to gain the support of women
in the upcoming elections that followed Pinochet’s defeat in the plebiscite
(p. 174). Centrist and leftist parties appealed to women as an electoral con-
stituency by inviting a handful of high-profile female activists to run as can-
didates and by incorporating some feminist demands into their electoral
agendas.7 Thus, feminists were presented with opportunities to pursue dou-
ble militancy, opportunities that did not exist for first-wave feminists.
The double-militancy strategy was further facilitated by the shift in the
meaning of the movement’s gender frame. Unlike in North America, where
second-wave feminism abandoned a maternal frame, the Chilean women’s
movement in the 1980s maintained the maternal collective action frame to
justify their activism and to make equality demands. But this time, women’s
groups used the gender frame to make fairly radical demands to restructure
gender relations and reorganize political space to include women. The gen-
der frame’s emphasis on women’s motherhood as the source for public activ-
ism was in fact an important element of the common outlook being forged
among organized women in this period. According to Valdés and Weinstein
(1993), “maternity is located at the centre of women’s mobilization symbol-
ized in the theme of ‘Life,’” and in this period, “there is a resignification of
maternity as a point of departure for collective action” (p. 188). Significantly,
this process of resignification was taking place among poor and working-class
7. For example, Fanny Pollarolo, a high-profile activist in the human rights movement, was
invited to be a candidate for the Communist Party (personal interview, July 29, 2002).

women, initially organizing to provide for their families, as well as middle-

class women organizing in the feminist groups. Thus the main differences
between the first- and second-wave women’s movements are in the nature of
the demands emanating from a transformed gender frame and the move-
ment’s relationships with political parties. This becomes clear by looking
more closely at the key organizations formed in this period.
After 1983, some of the most important groups to emerge were Women
for Life, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Chilean Woman ’83
(MEMCH ’83), and the Feminist Movement. The members who formed
Women for Life were responding to the inability of the prodemocracy move-
ment to overcome partisan divisions and to struggle effectively for democ-
racy (Baldez, 2002, pp. 154-160; Gaviola et al., 1994, p. 153). Although the
repression of the dictatorship throughout the 1970s succeeded in pacifying
the population, this changed after the economic crisis of 1982 to 1983. The
forces opposed to the dictatorship were extremely fragmented, however, and
the political parties seemed incapable of overcoming partisan differences to
work together for democracy. Thus some high-profile female militants from
different parties organized a women-only event, with the aim of illustrating
that it was possible to work collectively despite partisan differences. On
December 29, 1983, at the Caupolicán Theatre in Santiago, 10,000 women
joined together in an act of opposition to the dictatorship, despite the signifi-
cant police presence waiting outside. The success of this event led the women
who organized it to form Women for Life (Gaviola et al., 1994, p. 154). The
organization’s name highlights the gender framing involved: Women’s
politics is grounded in the (gendered) motivation to defend life.
In 1986, Women for Life presented a statement of women’s demands to
the Civil Assembly, an opposition event hosted by a prodemocracy network.
This was the first time that women’s demands formed such an integral part of
the public agenda. In the document, women insisted that “it is not possible to
conceive of a truly democratic society without the real democratization of the
condition of women.”8 Women’s demands for democracy included respect
for human rights; better wages; the creation of “dignified” jobs and an end to
unemployment; and access to education, housing, and health care. They
called for free contraception on demand, divorce legislation, and more equal
relations within the family. Regarding access to the political arena, they
called on the state to promote women’s participation in all social and political
organizations and within the state itself. Most importantly, these demands
were justified by a gender frame that linked women’s “different” styles of
8. The document, Pliego de la Mujeres (Women’s Charter), is reproduced in Gaviola et al.

(1994, pp. 244-247).

practicing politics to their maternal identities: “[Women’s] participation will

generate a political renovation, with non-authoritarian styles of debate,
organization, and direction.”
MEMCH ’83 was formed primarily by women from leftist parties as an
umbrella group, and at its highest point, it had 26 member organizations. The
women’s platform elaborated by MEMCH ’83 is similar to that of Women for
Life. They too argued that “a truly democratic society is not possible without
the active incorporation and protagonism of women in the struggle to achieve
it”9 and called for an end to gender discrimination in the labor force, in health
care, and through education. The platform included a section on sexuality,
demanding respect and assurance for a woman’s right “to know and decide
about her own body.” The demands of both Women for Life and MEMCH ’83
illustrate that women’s movements in this period, unlike those of the first
wave, did call for significant changes to gender relations that women be able
to exercise their political rights. This shows that a difference frame need not
be conservative, as some have argued (Strange, 1990, p. 210).
The Feminist Movement was formed in 1983 by women who wanted to
participate in the democratic struggle specifically as feminists (Chuchryk,
1989a, p. 166). This desire indicates that unlike their first-wave counterparts,
activists of this era sought involvement in the political struggle rather than
placing themselves above it. The Feminist Movement elaborated a Feminist
Manifesto in 1983 and in 1988 published Women’s Demands of Democracy.
These demands were fairly radical, containing a critique of traditional demo-
cratic practice in Chile and proposing measures to promote women’s partici-
pation as citizens, mothers, and workers. In the Feminist Manifesto, the
Feminist Movement claims,
Chilean feminism has shown that authoritarianism is more than a political

problem, it has origins and deep roots in the whole social structure. Many ele-
ments and contents which have not been considered political due to their links
to private daily life must be questioned and rejected.10
Feminists in this group went much further in their critique, not just of politics
but also of the private sphere—a critique not developed by first-wave
feminists:
9. This document, Prinicipios y Reivindicaciones que Configuran la Plataforma de la

Mujer Chilena, (Principles and Vindications that Comprise the Platform of Chilean Women), is
reproduced in Gaviola et al. (1994, pp. 238-243).
10. This document, along with Women’s Demands of Democracy, is reproduced in Gaviola
et al. (1994, pp. 234-247, 251-256).

We affirm that the family is authoritarian, that the socialization of children—

the future—is authoritarian, rigid in the assigning of stereotypical sexual roles;
that education is authoritarian and subject to censorship; that the factories,
offices, intermediate organizations, political parties, have all been constituted
in an authoritarian manner.
In 1988, around the time of the plebiscite on Pinochet’s continued rule, the
Feminist Movement issued Women’s Demands of Democracy, calling on Chil-
ean women to make their gender-based demands heard at a crucial juncture in
their nation’s history. The specific demands of the Feminist Movement in this
document went well beyond any earlier demands of women’s organizations.
For the first time, feminists called for the creation of an executive-level state
agency to devise policy for women and to ensure women’s participation in all
areas relevant to national life. They proposed quotas for women in govern-
ment and parliament. But these demands were also made amid affirmations
of the importance of women’s motherhood roles. The document states, “We
value our maternal role and we exercise it with great commitment and respon-
sibility, but our realization as persons is not exhausted by it.”
FEMINISTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES: POLITICAL

OPPORTUNITIES FOR DOUBLE MILITANCY
After 1983, popular protest against the dictatorship exploded, and politi-
cal parties reemerged to take a leading role in organizing and directing the
opposition to the dictatorship. Hence, the relative autonomy of social move-
ments from political parties was short lived. After the emergence of a more
visible and public democratic opposition, political parties began to intervene
more directly in the workings of movements, leading to some tension
between the two actors. According to Valenzuela (1991),
Because political parties had no channels for expression during the first decade
of military rule, they tended to function through social organizations. Once the
parties began to reconstruct their own spaces for action after 1983, they tried to
control and co-opt the social organizations—including women’s groups—that
had developed autonomously. (p. 167)
In this context, women’s organizations became more divided over strategy

and over partisan differences among members. Paulina Weber, MEMCH’s
current director, recalls that the organization was plagued by partisan conflict
as the transition to democracy grew nearer. She explains that because

MEMCH was mainly formed by women from the leftist parties, these “par-
ties sought in MEMCH a place for expression,” leading to considerable con-
flict among the organization’s members (personal interview, October 21,
1999). This period witnessed growing tensions between the more partisan
aims of party members and those of social movements. The debates over
insider versus outsider strategies intensified. Many women wanted to partici-
pate in the prodemocracy struggle but were wary about allying too closely
with the political parties. Other women believed that party militancy was key,
and there was no problem with participating in the parties as feminists. Yet
other women wanted to avoid politics altogether and focus on activities with
and for other women, activities that emphasized first and foremost the socio-
economic problems they experienced as women. For these women, the (par-
tisan) political arena was irrelevant to their daily problems largely because
the actors there traditionally ignore such issues (Gaviola et al., 1994; Valdés
& Weinstein, 1993).
Other conflicts emerged more directly out of partisan divisions within the
prodemocracy movement as parties tried to build their own support bases
within social organizations. After 1983, when women’s activism became
more public, the parties began to realize the power of women to mobilize.
This meant that the parties became more interested in women’s groups.
According to one feminist,
The women’s movement pioneered the struggle, they organized before any
other and had a strength not only numerically but a very strong moral force.
Therefore the political parties were very nice, very kind, instrumentalizing the
women’s movement. There was not a bad relation with them—on the contrary,
they had to look after us. (personal interview, September 9, 1999)
In a similar vein, one of the founders of Women for Life notes that the par-
ties sought to direct the organizing capacities of women. She explains that
after the 1983 event, which drew over 10,000 women,
then began this difficult thing with the parties, the realization that we repre-
sented important social capital, tremendously strong, and they exerted pres-
sure on us as a social organization so that we would do those things that they
wanted as a party. (quoted in Gaviola et al., 1994, p. 155)
Eventually, Women for Life became paralyzed by partisan conflict and ten-
sions, especially after the 1986 assassination attempt on Pinochet, when the
group sharply disagreed over strategy. They ceased acting shortly thereafter
(Muñoz, 1996, p. 9). A number of women who had been active in feminist

groups in the 1980s recall the bitter and acrimonious divisions of the late
1980s, when some women stopped participating altogether to avoid such
disputes.11
Not all women, however, were opposed to working with the political par-
ties. A substantial number of feminists believed that the primary mistake of
the feminist movement in the 1940s was that it had tried to remain above poli-
tics and had not forged any strategic alliances with political parties. When the
autonomy strategy failed, women simply moved into the parties without try-
ing to bring to them a feminist politics and without continuing to participate
in women’s organizations. By the late 1980s, although some women contin-
ued to view party politics negatively and sought to maintain their autonomy
from partisan politics, a substantial portion of the movement believed that
pursuing women’s interests required a feminist presence in the parties.
What were the results of the decision by many feminists to pursue double
militancy? On one hand, the presence of feminist activists in the parties
clearly had positive consequences in terms of “gendering” the transition
(Frohmann & Valdés, 1995; Waylen, 1997, 2000). This led some women to
belatedly realize the value of engaging in the partisan processes of the period.
For example, a woman whose group withdrew from MEMCH ’83 over parti-
san conflict reflected,
I think we made a mistake in being very defensive of the professionals and the
parties, we wanted to build a movement with its own direction, but it was a
period in which the presence of external agents was so strong that one ended up
disadvantaged before other groups that had more systematic support. (quoted
in Gaviola et al., 1994, p. 142)
In contrast, activists who opted for an insider strategy reflect on its suc-
cesses. Adriana Delpiano was active as a feminist in the Party for Democracy
(PPD) and explains that the advantage of the women’s movement in the
1980s was that it “was a movement that had a connotation of gender, but also
was linked to the political struggle of the moment—it didn’t marginalize
itself from the political struggle” (personal interview, September 9, 1999).
Adriana Muñoz, also of the PPD, is currently a parliamentarian and the first
woman to be president of the Chamber of Deputies. In discussing women’s
roles in the debates about how to reform socialism in Chile, she explains that
women’s activities in the opposition movement put them in a good position to
exert influence: “It was we women who were very linked to all of the social
world and from there we could incorporate very strongly our gender
11. Informal interviews and discussions with various movement activists, June to November
1999, Santiago, Chile.

demands” (personal interview, November 2, 1999). The PPD, a new party

created by socialists, reflects the presence of feminists within it. The party
has adopted a number of affirmative action measures, such as quotas, to
improve women’s participation in leadership and representative posts.12
Prior to the transition to democracy, two of the main parties constituting
the prodemocracy coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Socialist
Party’s Núñez faction, had feminists working within them to elaborate pro-
posals for women’s issues. The Christian Democrats formed a technical
department composed principally of professional women to study and diag-
nose areas of concern to women. Some of their proposals included democra-
tizing family relations; more knowledge for women about their sexuality and
their bodies; greater social value for domestic labor; and, in terms of political
participation, “greater access to and equality in political parties” (Molina,
1989, pp. 93-105). The proposals of the party that later became the PPD were
initially elaborated by the Federation of Socialist Women (FMS) from the
Núñez faction of the Socialist Party. Feminists of this faction consciously
pursued double militancy, believing that feminism must be practiced within
the parties. They argued that because parties were key actors in a democracy,
they were a legitimate and necessary space for feminist politics (p. 117). The
gender-specific proposals of the FMS included the increased participation of
women in all major areas of decision making that affect them, a recognition
of the value of domestic labor, nonsexist education, and social justice and
redistribution. They also called for greater reproductive freedoms for women
and the decriminalization of abortion (pp. 120-123). Although in the end,
many proposals were not adopted by their political parties in the official elec-
tion platforms, the pressure of feminists in the parties and the prominence of
the women’s movement led all political parties to express concern with
women’s gender issues during the 1989 election campaigns (Frohmann &
Valdés, 1995).
Perhaps the most critical effort by feminists to place women’s particular
demands at the center of the prodemocracy platform came after the 1988 ref-
erendum on Pinochet’s rule. The prodemocracy forces won the referendum
with a vote of 54% against Pinochet and now had to prepare for presidential
and parliamentary elections in 1989. To this end, they formed the
Concertation of Parties for Democracy (CPD). As candidate lists were pre-
pared and platforms elaborated, women noted with growing concern that
they were being marginalized in the process. Few women were being nomi-
nated as candidates. Their organizing capacities and their moral voice had
12. Author’s interviews with A. Muñoz (November 2, 1999) and M. A. Saa, a PPD parlia-
mentarian (September 29, 1999).

been employed strategically by the opposition in the plebiscite campaign, but

with the return of a more traditional style of party politics, there seemed to be
less space for women. Feminists responded by creating the National
Concertation of Women for Democracy (CNMD), composed of female mili-
tants of the CPD, independent feminists, and women from NGOs. Their main
aims were to prepare a government program for women and to support
female candidates (Valdés, 1994, p. 309). They were not, however, intended
to be merely female supporters of the CPD. According to Josefina Rossetti,
executive secretary of the CNMD, “we did not aim to be the feminine arm of
the Concertación.”13
The CNMD was critically important because of the access that some of the
leaders of the women’s movement had to party leaders (Frohmann & Valdés,
1995, p. 288). Thus, through an insider strategy, feminists pressured the CPD
to include in its program a chapter on women and, most importantly, a com-
mitment to promote women’s equality through an executive-level agency, a
central demand of the feminist movement. The CNMD’s (1989) program for
government indicates that these demands were achieved. Presidential candi-
date Patricio Aylwin also integrated the women’s movement’s slogan,
“Democracy in the country and in the home,” into his campaign. Frohmann
and Valdés (1995) argue that this was “an important ideological break-
through for the women’s movement” because no presidential candidate had
ever implicitly accepted the link “between oppression in the public sphere
and oppression in the private sphere” (p. 288). Unfortunately, because of the
need to maintain opposition unity, any potentially divisive issues, such as
abortion and divorce, were left off the agenda (Muñoz, 1996, p. 13).14 The
movement’s most radical and substantive demands, encapsulated in the 1988
publication Women’s Demands of Democracy, presented by the Feminist
Movement, were also rejected by the prodemocracy opposition parties. The
demands, which included quotas for women in government, the equal shar-
ing of domestic work among men and women, and reproductive freedom,
were not part of any opposition proclamation. In fact, political parties
expressed their displeasure at this list of demands, saying that it would pro-
voke controversy and disunity at a time when opposition unity was crucial
(Frohmann & Valdés, 1995, p. 286).
13. Speech at the Encuentro de la Concertación de las Mujeres por la Democracia (Meeting
of the Concertation of Women for Democracy), Santiago, Chile, 1990.
14. The need for unity derived from the binominal majoritarian electoral system imposed by
the dictatorship in the 1980 constitution. This system compelled the main parties to form two
broad coalitions.

Interestingly enough, many of these feminist demands were also absent

from the CNMD’s policy proposals. So although the insider strategy of many
feminists produced an enormous success for the women’s movement by
placing gender-based demands on the agenda of the incoming government,
showing the potential gains to be made from the double-militancy strategy, it
cannot be considered an unqualified success for two reasons. First, feminists’
most radical demands, namely, reproductive freedom and mandatory quotas
for women in politics, disappeared from the platforms of organizations pur-
suing an insider strategy because of the parties’ rejection of these demands.
Second, many women’s groups were not represented by those women pursu-
ing an insider strategy, and consequently, the demands of women represented
by organizations linked to parties outside of the CNMD, notably those linked
to the Revolutionary Left Movement or the Communist Party, did not find
expression in the CNMD (Matear, 1997, p. 89).
CONCLUSIONS
There are a number of conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing com-

parative analysis of first- and second-wave feminism in Chile. First, these
cases highlight the importance of movement strategy with respect to auton-
omy versus double militancy. I argue that the choice of a double-militancy
strategy was a crucial factor in the success (defined as institutional change) in
the case of second-wave feminism in Chile. First-wave feminists’ adherence
to an autonomy strategy left them isolated and weakened politically after
being enfranchised and consequently without the allies needed to support
institutional changes in the direction of gender equality. I have argued, how-
ever, that the key factor is not merely autonomy versus double militancy but
the timing of these choices: Movements must have the autonomy to develop
demands that challenge fundamentally the status quo but must use an insider
strategy to get these demands on the public agenda.
More significantly, the option for movement activists to pursue double
militancy is dependent on the political opportunity structure. The option of
participating in both women’s organizations and political parties, as well as
bringing gender-based concerns to political parties, did not exist for first-
wave feminists after women were enfranchised. In this era, the language of
politics was ideological and class based, and women’s organizations had not
forged alliances with centrist and leftist parties that would lead these parties
to promote women’s equality or perceive benefits from doing so. In the con-
text of the transition to democracy, however, parties of the Center and the Left
saw important advantages not only to inviting the active participation of

women activists (some of whom were well-known feminists) but also to

addressing women’s gender-based demands in electoral campaigns. Once
the center-left coalition formed the government after the first set of demo-
cratic elections, feminists were assured some important and powerful allies.
The second conclusion relates to the importance of collective action
frames and their relationship to the political opportunity structure. It is often
believed that a maternal frame is inherently conservative or inconsistent with
feminist demands for restructuring gender relations (see Craske, 1999, p. 138;
Feijoó, 1989, p. 88; Jaquette, 1994, p. 389). I have shown, however, that both
the first- and second-wave movements in Chile employed a maternal frame
but that it carried quite different meanings, thus highlighting the dynamic and
contextual nature of gender framing. First-wave feminists’ gender frame
depicted women as apolitical, thereby disposing them to reject alliances with
partisan political actors. But the different context in which second-wave fem-
inism emerged produced a politicization of women’s motherhood roles, and
feminists then used this as a basis for demands to restructure political space to
accommodate women and their concerns. The shift in the meaning of the
gender frame derives from changes in the political opportunity structure.
During the dictatorship, the closure of political space (especially the shutting
down of parties) led to the politicization of the community and social arenas
in which social movements operated. The weakness of partisan actors and the
politicization of the social arena allowed women’s movement activists the
space (autonomy) needed to develop gender-based critiques of traditional
political practice and to formulate quite radical demands for change. But
most important, a gender frame that affirmed rather than denied women’s
political identities encouraged feminists to pursue double militancy.
A third conclusion that can be drawn is that one should not overestimate
the value of a double-militancy strategy. Although the institutional changes
that occurred in Chile after the return of democracy (i.e., SERNAM and the
adoption of affirmative action measures by the centrist and leftist parties)
could not have been achieved without feminist pressure from the inside, fem-
inists in the parties also dropped the movement’s most radical demands, such
as abortion and quotas for women in parliament. Consequently, despite
important achievements of Chilean feminists, there is still a long struggle
ahead (see Franceschet, 2001). But this struggle currently takes place in a
transformed institutional context, one that facilitates the promotion of equal-
ity. Indeed, the very terms of the debates over autonomy versus double mili-
tancy have shifted because of the institutional changes that second-wave
feminists helped bring about. Today, the double-militancy strategy has less to
do with feminists’ participation in political parties and more to do with their
participation in state agencies such as SERNAM or in NGOs that work

closely with SERNAM.15 Thus, the main debates today are between
autónomas (autonomous feminists) and institucionales (institutional femi-
nists) (Beckman, 2001; Godoy & Guerrero, 2001). These debates continue to
be intense, although it is clear that at least for now, the institucionales have
greater prominence, and, in the context of successive center-left governments
since the return of democracy, these “femocrats” can count on fairly reliable
support from those in power. A change to a government led by the Right
would alter the political opportunity structure for feminists, in turn
necessitating changes in strategy.
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Explaining Social Movement Outcomes Collective Action Frames and Strategic Choices in First-And Second-Wave Feminism in Chile

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Explaining Social Movement Outcomes Collective Action Frames and Strategic Choices in First-And Second-Wave Feminism in Chile

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COMPARATIVE

Keywords: women’s movements; social movements; political opportunity structure; collective

F irst-wave feminism in Chile (1884 to 1949), like first-wave feminism in

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cal demands to transform unequal gender relations. Some therefore argue

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often summed up as the “insider”-versus-“outsider” dilemma (Gamson &

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occur only when parties perceive some advantages (electoral or otherwise)

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With the establishment of SERNAM, the institutional context in which

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES

Much of the research on social movements employs the concept of the

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respond to such moments in gendered terms” (Baldez, 2002, p. 11), in other

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FIRST-WAVE FEMINISM IN CHILE (1884 TO 1949)

Feminism emerged as a social movement in Chile as women pursued

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THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

In their history of the Chilean suffrage movement, Edda Gaviola, Ximena

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POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES AND THE

First-wave feminists in Chile achieved the goal of women’s enfranchise-

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around the project of building socialism in Chile (Chaney, 1979; Kirkwood,

Women’s public activism reemerged in the context of General Pinochet’s

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women, initially organizing to provide for their families, as well as middle-

8. The document, Pliego de la Mujeres (Women’s Charter), is reproduced in Gaviola et al.

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practicing politics to their maternal identities: “[Women’s] participation will

Chilean feminism has shown that authoritarianism is more than a political

9. This document, Prinicipios y Reivindicaciones que Configuran la Plataforma de la

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We affirm that the family is authoritarian, that the socialization of children—

FEMINISTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES: POLITICAL

In this context, women’s organizations became more divided over strategy

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demands” (personal interview, November 2, 1999). The PPD, a new party

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been employed strategically by the opposition in the plebiscite campaign, but

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Interestingly enough, many of these feminist demands were also absent

There are a number of conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing com-

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women activists (some of whom were well-known feminists) but also to

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Alvarez, Sonia E. (1990). Engendering democracy in Brazil: Women’s movements in transition

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