Gender and citizenship: Democratization and women's politics in Chile.

摘要

This dissertation examines how women's political participation changes through processes of democratization. Through an analysis of the Chilean case study, I challenge previous research findings which conclude that women's participation declines following transitions to democracy. I argue that such negative conclusions derive from a failure to conceptualize women's post-transition activities as political, and a tendency to conceive of movement unity and solidarity as the comparative norm for women's movements. My own study of women's political participation in Chile is situated in a feminist theoretical framework which, by definition, adheres to an expansive definition of politics, and, instead of taking male politics as a conceptual norm, looks for the variety of ways that women participate politically. I further situate the project in feminist citizenship theory, focusing mainly on the dichotomy between the “formal” and “informal” political arenas to explain women's political marginalization. Women's citizenship is undermined largely because of their different ways of participating politically, most notably, the location of their activism in the “informal” political arena.; Women's citizenship is potentially transformed during democratization, a time when political processes are more open and the boundary between the “formal” and “informal” arenas is (temporarily) blurred. The Chilean case yields considerable insights into these processes. I show how democratization affects women's participation by reconstructing the boundary between “formal” politics—once again dominated by male-led political parties—and “informal” politics, where women continue to predominate. I analyze women's participation in Chile in the three areas where women currently struggle to expand their citizenship: electoral politics; bureaucratic politics (mainly in women's policy machinery created after the transition); and in movement politics in civil society. The problem for women today is not re-igniting their activism—women continue to actively participate—but forging strategic linkages among women who participate in these three arenas. I argue that there are currently both gender and class factors that undermine women's citizenship. While middle-class and professional women enjoy greater access to “formal” political arenas, popular sector women do not, and continue to try to resolve collectively their problems in the “informal” arena. Constructing linkages between women active in the two arenas is the main challenge in post-transition Chile.