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CALL FOR PAPERS NOMADIAS MAGAZINE No. 33 2024.

Special issue sex/dissident: 25 years since the decriminalization of sodomy in Chile, and 51 years since the first homosexual protest.

NOMADÍAS CUIR/QUEER/KUIR. A political/sexual dissident speech to think about the south-south.

For more information, see the following link.

Being a woman as a strategy to overthrow the civil-military dictatorship in Chile

Authors

Abstract

Mujeres por la Vida (Women for Life) was a women's movement initiated in 1983 with the aim of creating unity among diverse women throughout Chile to fight peacefully against the civil-military dictatorship, the return to democracy and greater rights for women. The aim of this article is to reflect on the female subject that Mujeres por la Vida built and appealed to in order to promote a united and collective struggle against the dictatorship. From the archival review and the bets on generated memories, we will describe both the "good" and the "bad" Chilean woman to whom they appealed and we will analyze how this appeal allowed questioning and reinforcing essentialist notions of the feminine gender. A reading of strategic essentialism is proposed in order to understand how the appeal to "being a woman" made it possible to summon thousands of participants and achieve the return to democracy.

Keywords:

Women for Life, dictatorship, gender, Chile