Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920-1950

By Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt

Book Overview

With this book, Karin Rosemblatt presents a gendered history of the politics and political compromise that emerged in Chile during the 1930s and 1940s, when reformist popular-front coalitions held power. While other scholars have focused on the economic realignments and novel political pacts that characterized Chilean politics during this era, Rosemblatt explores how gender helped shape Chile's evolving national identity.

Rosemblatt examines how and why the aims of feminists, socialists, labor activists, social workers, physicians, and political leaders converged around a shared gender ideology. Tracing the complex negotiations surrounding the implementation of new labor, health, and welfare policies, she shows that professionals in health and welfare agencies sought to regulate gender and sexuality within the working class and to consolidate the male-led nuclear family as the basis of societal stability. Leftists collaborated in these efforts because they felt that strong family bonds would generate a sense of class belonging and help unify the Left, while feminists perceived male familial responsibility as beneficial for women. Diverse actors within civil society thus reworked the norms of masculinity and femininity developed by state agencies and political leaders -- even as others challenged those ideals.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807848816
• ISBN13: 9780807848814
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

rereading traditional history

i found the text uncompromising in substance while being very accessible to a non-academic (i am not an academic). the author provided an interesting analysis of coalition building in early to mid- 20th century history in chile. she takes a generally accepted understanding of chilean state development and looks at it through a different lens which leads to a much more true and nuanced version of the same story. this is a story of how various political and civic groups with differing political agendas negotiated a vision of the state that tried to meet all of their interests. this vision was based on gendered identities of its citizenry. overall, i thought that this was a great book -- especially for people interested 20th century chilean history, interested in chile's political culture, or interested in seeing the outcome of successfully combining various political, social, cultural, and historical analyses.