Women and Democracy: For Home and Country
Fisher, Jo
While working-class women played key roles in the resistance to military dictatorships across the Southern Cone, the return of constitutional rule has, ironically, presented them with new...
...Its huge increase in membership, currently claimed to be 450,000, is the result of the tangible benefits the Union offers women, in particular its system of health insurance, which covers a vast section of the female population that previously had little access to medical services...
...The Chilean arpi- _ lleras-appliqu6 patchworks which o depicted the persecution and deprivation of the every- 0 day lives of the A Chilean arpillera...
...Similarly, the presence of working-class women and the variety of interests with which they are concerned can also be a source of strength to the new women's movement...
...We have things in common with middle-class women, but we also have other problems that middle-class women don't have, like the housing shortage, debt problems, unemployment," said a member of a Chilean popular feminist organization, "and we're not going to advance as women if the two things aren't closely linked...
...The problem is, should the women's movement just be demanding from the government or should we be participants in the process...
...Women must now find new ways of fighting for their rights...
...Although the economic crisis is a that we'd suggested was then major reason for the continued growth of women's from a political party or a unio organizations, it is not the only explanation...
...In the beginning, at least, women did not consider their actions 'political,' but their natural duty as good mothers and wives...
...We don't want this type of unionism-it doesn't serve women....The meetings are late, you have to find someone to look after the kids, you have to wait a long time for the bus and it's dangerous at night....And then when you get to the meeting, you find that it's the men who speak all the time--you can't get a word in edgewise...
...It has also depended on historical factors that affected the development of the women's movement in each country...
...For the Grandmothers, the return of their missing grandchildren-the children of 'disappeared' couples who were illegally handed over to childless military and police coupleshas depended on working closely with the courts and the government...
...Their limited resources and lack of A s well as creating their access to institutional power often led working-class A nations, women hav women's organizations to reject bureaucratic proce- .IVinroads into tradition dures and the legalistic processes of negotiation working-class politics...
...the conditions for more mili While many groups have introduced more formality exist in our societies...
...We didn't want women to go back to their houses when the struggle against the dictatorship ended...
...However its aim is not only to introduce women's concerns into union policy, but also to change union practices which exclude women...
...Rosa ignored the men's advice...
...And despite winning authorization to establish a union social-security fund, the It aI s 1' JS Argentine Housewives' Union has not yet secured legal tradeunion status...
...4 In Uruguay, "Withou Argentina and Chile, women's government departments were won't be set up to develop and promote working-cla policies for women...
...Women took center establishing their stage in the struggle against the dictatorship...
...The original group of Mothers, however, have remained steadfast in their refusal to negotiate with the government...
...Instead, supported by the women's center she helped set up in 1989 in the shantytown where she lives on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, she became the first woman ever to be elected to the neighborhood committee...
...in Argentina, 30,000 people 'disappeared' andthousands more were murdered...
...Some women's groups are turning to international aid organizations VOL XXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 33REPORT ON WOMEN for support...
...You realize that a lot of your problems aren't just yours alone, that all women have got them and that means we can work together to change our lives," said one member of the Community Health Workers, a women's organization in the poor outskirts of Buenos Aires...
...Because when we I munities to rely more on self-help, increasing meetings, no one took any noti women's burden...
...Women and Democracy: For Home and Country 1. In the name of 'national security' one in 30 Uruguayans spenttime in prison...
...The difficulties women faced with the return of traditional politics not only reflected the resistance of male-dominated organizations to change, but also the diversity of women's interests...
...The Housewives' Union represents a new 'territorial' kind of trade unionism, but unlike most neighborhood women's groups, it maintains a traditional centralized structure and allies itself closely with the Peronist Party...
...When you talk to them, you end up fighting...
...The 'Quota Law,' passed in 1991, made it obligatory for political parties to field a minimum of 30% women candidates in national elections...
...Domestic routines were disrupted by their absence, and husbands, children and housework became obstacles to women's participation...
...After the dictatorship, people stopped going to the street to fight for their rights and suddenly there are hundreds and hundreds of men in offices making decisions that affect us, without even talking to us," complained one grassroots leader in a Santiago shantytown...
...Even during the dic training in decision-making, and delegating responsi- begun to create their own sec bilities...
...But ties with foreign and national institutions have sometimes put at risk their objective of self-education...
...In all three countries, new domestic-violence initiatives have been implemented, including women's refuges and police stations staffed by women for the survivors of rape and domestic violence...
...Uruguayans and Chileans had to wait longer as the military scrambled unsuccessfully to legalize their regimes with plebiscites and then to negotiate to insure that their own impunity was guaranteed in the transition agreements...
...How could the armed forces admit they were worried by a group of middle-aged women...
...n 1983 the Malvinas debacle, combined with the economic crisis and widespread public discontent, precipitated the fall of the military regime in Argentina...
...Like many other women's organizations, the Mothers grew up outside the traditional political system, and created a way of hacer politica-making politics-that was based on direct action, rather than negotiation...
...It was precisely because they evoked the powerful image of motherhood and the family that women posed problems for dictatorships claiming to represent those same values...
...into their procedures, not all have simply duplicated traditional forms...
...We've got to fill in a 22-page form, and every heading has a word that no one here understands...
...The institutions _ don't want to contribute towards wages for the people 8 who work here unless they're professionals...
...Standing outside the women's center, a rickety wooden building that stayed closed throughout the 16 years of General Pinochet's dictatorship, Rosa comments wearily about Chile's new political representatives: "They're not interested in women's issues...
...First we demanded the right to organize a union, like all workers in Argentina," one member of the Housewives' Union said...
...T some improvements in the Chilean economy, for political speeches and no one t example, the number of communal kitchens is still A Uruguayan factory work increasing...
...They said we were mad," said one Mother...
...Not being part of a political party," she continued, "we had no back-up and we didn't understand anything...
...Either meetings were arranged around the duties which punctuate a woman's daycollecting the children from school, making the dinner-or women simply took their children to the meetings with them and improvised day care...
...In Chile a campaign to legalize divorce is underway...
...Working-class women's organizations found themselves increasingly marginalized from decision-making processes...
...women to participate in leadership roles...
...They have worked with other women's organizations, both feminist and non-feminist, in campaigns, training, and research projects, and have introduced new issues into the union world, such as domestic violence, sex education, and even abortion...
...In Argentina, for example, the Women's Secretariat had its budget slashed and was finally dissolved as part of a process of state 'rationalization.' The government has begun to take steps in Argentina to establish a cabinet-level minister for women, reinforcing fears that women's organizations are being manipulated by the state...
...Should we risk governments and parties capturing and braking the momentum of the women's movement, or should we remain autonomous and risk powerlessness...
...The extent to which workingclass women and feminist organizations have been able to work together has depended on the degree to which they recognize the diversity in each other's situations...
...These problems were compounded by lack of experience and unfamiliarity with the array of political institutions restored by parliamentary democracy...
...The Mothers and Grandmothers of the disappeared not only saw human rights as an ethical matter which transcended party political interests, but they also harbored a deep distrust of party politics, based on the lack of support they received from political figures during the dictatorship...
...While working-class women like Rosa played key roles in the resistance to military dictatorships across Latin America's Southern Cone, the return of constitutional rule has, ironically, presented them with new challenges...
...They have encouraged unions to move beyond traditional areas of action and to become involved in community issues and develop links with local organizations...
...Thirteen members of the human rights movement, including the first president of the Mothers, disappeared into Argentina's death camps...
...The proportion of VOL XXVII...
...In Chile and Argentina the transition to constitutional rule was primarily hammered out between the political parties and the military...
...The Uruguayan military withdrew in 1985...
...While working-class women played key roles in the resistance to military dictatorships across the Southern Cone, the return of constitutional rule has, ironically, presented them with new challenges...
...It wasn't just that we wanted democracy, full stop...
...In Argentina, not since 1951, the first election in which women could vote, were so few women voted into parliament...
...conditions for their widespread mobilization...
...The National Women's Meetings in Argentina provide a forum for growing numbers of feminists, as well as women from neighborhood groups, political parties, trade unions, and human rights organizations...
...Growing poverty has forced com- tary rule...
...ask new constitutional governments have exacerbated who attended clandestine union social inequality...
...They've done nothing to stop the spread of cholera...
...The gains women can make at the level of the state-whether for better health services, equal pay, or jobs-are limited by the current economic and political climate in the Southern Cone...
...The yellow vote-in don't want someone favor of the amnesty-prevailed...
...It's not a bad thing that the political economy is explained in terms of a football game," she continued, "but how many women understand football...
...We've been on the verge of tears," said one leader of a grassroots women's project in Chile...
...One group would say you had to meet in a certain place and another group would say you had to meet in another place and those of us from the social movements were left in the middle....We didn't know where we were...
...We wanted to play a part in the workingclass struggle for democracy but we also wanted to fight for our needs as women," said one member of a shantytown women's organization in Santiago...
...These challenges, however, often take the form nocracy...
...When the new government, elected on a strong human rights platform, limited its prosecution to a showcase trial of members of the junta, the Mothers saw their mistrust vindicated...
...In Argentina, for example, in a rare example of cooperation across political-party lines, women activists from all the major parties agreed on a joint campaign for positive discrimination in order to improve women's representation in parliament...
...They wrote little down, and spoke in the language of their everyday lives, instead of the language of conventional politics...
...Recognizing the ways in which women's domestic and working lives are so intimately bound up, women's commissions have concerned themselves with discrimination in society and the inequalities in personal relationships in the home...
...group becausealthough they also condemned the government's handling of the military-they saw the Mothers' style as too abrasive for an elected government...
...This is true even in Argentina, where there is little tradition of independent social organizations...
...2 "In all the discussions the underlying debate The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo s is about the relation- information about their missing child ship with the state," said one Uruguayan trade unionist, echoing the concerns of the women's movements across the region...
...Progress toward a consensus on basic demands may be emerging...
...She is now responsible for representing the interests of some 12,000 residents...
...In Chile, feminism has taken up the challenge of incorporating the concerns of grassroots women's groups with annual Popular Feminist Meetings, as well as by offering leadership training and professional services...
...3 In Chile, of the 158 people elected to parNACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON WOMEN liament in 1989, only 10 were women...
...We've got to find other ways of working," said one member of the commission...
...With government help limited, much of the work of working-class women's organizations continues to depend on the personal sacrifices of members and small-scale fund-raising activities...
...NO 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 35REPORT ON WOMEN women councillors voted into office in Santiago's most recent municipal elections is double the national government rate...
...of separate initiatives, with little cooperation between feminists and non-feminists, or among women of different classes or political allegiances...
...The Grandmothers have cooperated with other human rights organizations, including the breakaway Mothers' group, to present various proposals to parliament aimed at changing the law for the benefit of the dependents of the disappeared...
...Differences hidden by the common struggle against military rule now came to the surface...
...The commission has been instrumental in winning equal pay, health services and child care facilities and encouraging the growing number of women employed in the informal market to organize...
...Partly out women in paid work in recent of a desire to preserve their independence from politi- rebuilding unions under milita cal parties, many have adopted imaginative ways of ment which emerged after th promoting internal democracy, encouraging all almost exclusively by men...
...2 But women were not deterred, even when the hypocrisy of the military proclamations about the sanctity of the family was exposed...
...In Chile and Uruguay, by contrast, where the feminist movement clearly identified "We wanted a cultural transformation, a society with many changes in values...
...The women don't go because they want to do something to improve their neighborhood and all the political people do is have barbecues and fight among themselves," said one member of the Community Health Workers in Argentina, echoing the sentiments of women in the shantytowns of Santiago de Chile...
...Many women's organizaus there tions now see a strong, unified movement as an essential pre- n effective requisite for further advances...
...We didn't want women to go back to their houses when the struggle against the dictatorship ended...
...In Argentina, feminist groups played little part in the movement for democracy and developed few links with the women who led the struggle against the dictatorship...
...In Chile, some women's groups have successfully promoted their members as independent candidates in elections to local government and community organizations...
...The new parliaments were almost exclusively male affairs, and in some countries even fewer women held elected office than before the dictatorships...
...hile the combined efforts of the women's movements have transformed many aspects of women's social, economic and political roles, women continue to face formidable challenges...
...In Argentina there has been a unique attempt to bring women and the work they do inside the home into the scope of union concern...
...Why did we meet ed one Chilean woman ,n meetings under mili)ut forward ideas in the ce of us...
...Working-class women do not always agree that feminist campaigns concerning divorce, domestic violence and abortion are political priorities...
...The first Feminist Conference in Uruguay in 1992 also embraced a wide range of women's groups with the explicit aim of building a more cohesive movement...
...Organizations made up of women with no political allegiance or from different political parties suddenly had to decide where they stood in terms of traditional politics...
...In Chile, the Catholic Church set up many women's groups to encourage women to find new ways of supporting their families...
...The kitchen and the home became political...
...In addition, the military fell victim to the misconceptions of its own machismo...
...The re-emergence of political parties and trade unions put new demands on the women's movement...
...Within state structures women are often isolated and underfunded, no match for the powerful alliance of forces which they must sometimes confront...
...3 In the 1991 elections, women made up only 3% of the membersof Congress, compared with 12% in 1983, and 22% in 1951...
...At a time of cutbacks in public expenditures, gender issues are often seen as a luxury that the state can ill-afford...
...Women have also won space inside the state apparatus...
...Even those who have in recent years come to define themselves as feminists prefer to use the term 'popular feminism,' differentiating themselves from the 'traditional' women's movement and identifying closely with working-class organizations...
...Whether it was mothers in Argentina searching for their disappeared children, or housewives in Chile faced with the privatization of health services and education, women realized they needed to educate themselves to understand what was happening around them...
...But while they began to talk about machismo, these women rarely identified themselves as 'feminist.' They saw feminist organizations not only as middleclass and failing to take into account their practical concerns, but also as anti-men and anti-family...
...The same idea put forward by a man n, using different words "he men gave their big ook any notice of us...
...However much women saw their public participation as a natural extension of their family role, their new activities took them away from the home and transformed their daily lives...
...The process of women's politicization led to a growing awareness of the importance of gender...
...It wasn't just that we wanted democracy, full stop...
...Other grassroots women's groups share the Mothers' mistrust of political parties and are working to establish their autonomy...
...Nevertheless, women found themselves in the firing line of military repression...
...Many demands high on the agenda or a womer of feminist organizations have been won-although not always in the form desired- Without u and some of the more crude examples of discrimination be no de have been removed from the statute books...
...This was reflected in the absence of women from the decision-making posts of the party structures...
...When the men came out of prison or returned from exile," said one Uruguayan trade unionist, "they took up all the spaces, sat down in the same chairs, and expected the women to go back home...
...In 1985, against a background of growing hostility between the Mothers and the government, a small group of Mothers, including some of the original founding members, left to form their own breakaway till gather every Thursday to demand dren...
...The idea of classifying unpaid work done in the home as a job like any other formed the basis for a series of demands made by the Housewives' Union, set up in 1984...
...The language used at union meetings reinforces the idea of the union as a man's world...
...In the words of a member of a women's center in a Chilean shantytown: "Without us there won't be an effective working-class movement or a women's movement because we are the majority...
...Even in Uruguay, where the process was more open-involving social movements as well as political parties-women had to struggle to win a place at the negotiating table and to make gender issues a legitimate concern for the new government...
...Women created loosely-knit, nonhierarchical groups, based on solidarity and mutual support...
...4. In the 1992 municipal elections, 11.5% of elected councillorswere women...
...The question of political parties was very important when the [public] demonstrations started," said one member of a Chilean grassroots women's group...
...Women's sections inside political parties also got their parties to endorse many key gender demands...
...s movement Women are challenging dis- crimination as it appears in s movement many different areas of their the majority, lives-inside political parties, unions and communities, and there will at home...
...While most political parties addressed some of the issues raised by women, this reflected their interest in winning the female vote or taking advantage of women's organizational strength in the neighborhoods, rather than a fundamental rethinking of their programs...
...The experience of the human rights movement in Argentina illustrates this dilemma...
...own commission inside the national trade-union organization...
...In Argentina the United Nations convention on discrimination against women and the law on nursery-school education have been ratified, patria potestad-which gave privileges to men in decisions over children-has been reformed, and divorce has been legalized...
...In the words of their president, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo searched for their children with "the desperation of a lioness who has lost her cubs...
...Moreover, these initiatives sometimes fail to take into account the situation of working-class women...
...We were never able to forget this remark because we've heard the same thing everywhere, ever since...
...Widespread support among women at these meetings for the 'Quota Law' contributed in large part to the bill's successful passage through Congress...
...sidered subversive material which had to be buried in the ground when the police or army entered the shantytowns...
...Protests like the marches of empty pots, shopping strikes, and the banging of saucepans bore the distinctive hallmark of women's participation...
...By sharing experiences, women found not only a source of mutual support, but they also began to recognize that the roots of their problems were not individual but social...
...With trade unions and political parties banned, public meetings prohibited, and tens of thousands of activists murdered or 'disappeared,' it was women who took center stage in the struggle against the dictatorships.' Not only were the first public challenges to military rule in all three countries led by women and their human rights organizations, but behind the scenes women's networks of workshops, communal kitchens, popular canteens and health-care projects helped working-class families survive military experiments in monetarism and years of economic crisis...
...The people of Argentina can't solve their problems in the courts," said their president...
...We can only do it by participating and fighting.....We will never negotiate with the blood of our children...
...Their brutal, repressive policies, however, drastically transformed women's lives and created the Jo Fisher is the author of Mothers of the Disappeared (1989)1 This article is based on research carried out for Out of the Shadows: Women, Resistance and Politics in South America (Monthly Review, 1993...
...They all fell ab practical problems but also because they offer women 'Yes, we'd been thinking abou other benefits, from friendship and company to the possibility of more far-reaching changes in their lives...
...We're still not connected to the water mains or sewerage systems, and it's been left to us to educate people....We don't want to depend on the politicians...
...That's Women campaigning for the green "no" vote in a 1988 referendum on the bad because we military amnesty passed by the Uruguayan Congress...
...Without us there will be no democracy...
...Women in human rights, workplace and feminist organizations must now find new ways of influencing the political process and fighting for their rights...
...2. The arpilleras were sold abroad to help families of the victims ofpolitical repression and poverty...
...We wanted a cultural transformation, a society with many changes in values...
...These organizations have continued to unionists reacted to a propose grow not just because they help solve immediate commission...
...To varying degrees, issues such as birth control, child care and domestic violence stopped being private matters of the home and became subjects for public discussion within working-class women's groups...
...At a time when the political and economic outlook is bleak and the power of traditional working-class organizations is threatened by conservative legislation, unemployment and public disenchantment, the women's movement represents a force for revitalizing and democratizing working-class politics...
...er recounted how male al to set up a women's out laughing and joked, t forming a men's com34 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34REPORT ON WOMEN mission,"' she said...
...Working-class women's growing concern with gender issues and the common goal of opposition to military rule did, however, help open the possibility of a dialogue with the new feminist organizations which VoL XXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 31 31 VOL XXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993REPORT ON WOMEN sprung up in the closing years of the dictatorships...
...Police continually raided the communal kitchens in Chile, where groups of up to 100 women 30 N&CLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON WOMEN cooked together...
...General Pinochet, after 17 years in power, finally handed over the reins of government to an elected president in Chile in 1990...
...By not considering them a serious challenge, the military gave women the breathing space they needed to set up their organizations...
...Many of the organizations working-class women created bore little resemblance to conventional ones, not only because of the problems of working under dictatorships, but also because the organizations had to be adapted to meet women's needs...
...Despi which characterize constitutional politics...
...There was a problem of language, because we didn't understand the concepts, including the word 'concept.' We didn't understand what the parties stood for...
...with the struggle against the dictatorship, and where feminists set out to make contact with working-class groups, women marched together under the banner of "Democracy in the Country and Democracy in the Home...
...Why not recipes or language related to the family economy...
...In order to take part in the resistance to military rule, women had to find ways to deal with these constraints...
...It was accepted that men were dictators and women were dictated to," said one member of a grassroots women's group in Chile...
...Women's government departments may have certain powers but decisions about women are also made in other ministries where they are scarcely represented...
...Men and hips...
...No 1 JULY/AUGUST 1993 35 VOL XXVIl...
...Commissions set up inside unions across the Southern Cone have not yet achieved real independence or significant decision-making powers...
...Until that changes, tary coups will always own community organie also begun to make nally male spheres of te the huge increase in t years and their role in ry rule, the labor movee dictatorships was led In Argentina, where force is female, only six ade unions are led by tatorships women had :tions inside the undernt...
...Despite this hostili- t ty, in Uruguay, - where there has been a massive increase in women in the paid workforce over the past 20 years, women Women from the Party for Democracy (PPD) march for the "No" (antihave succeeded in Pinochet) vote before the plebiscite in Chile in 1988...
...BY Jo FISHER "When the democratic government took over, the men around here said, 'It's okay, Rosa, you can leave it to us now.' We thought, 'have they forgotten everything we did during the dictatorship...
...Politicians have tried to persuade people to leave us and join their parties...
...Campaigns against domestic violence, for example, not only challenge the authoritarianism embedded in everyday life and personal relationships, but also contribute towards a more democratic future, making it more difficult for tyrannical regimes to win legitimacy...
...The military dictatorships which seized power in Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973) and Argentina (1976) all exalted the traditional ideals of motherhood and the family...
...Suddenly the police would arrive and find the food, kick people, destroy all the food stores and arrest everyone," said one member of a communal kitchen in a shantytown outside Santiago de Chile...
...These applique tapestries depicting the persecution women poor-were con- suffered in their everyday lives were considered subversive material by the army...
...ground trade-union movemei The neoliberal economic policies adopted by the separately from the men...
...Similar legislation is being considered in Uruguay...
...Despite and he'd get the applause...
...Unions have usually been hostile to anything which might be construed as 'women's issues,' believing them to be divisive of the working class...
...in Chile over 30,000 were killedand tens of thousands were imprisoned...
...From trade unions and shantytown organizations to political parties and national government, the stories are similar...
...Secondly we wanted our work recognized through the payment of a salary, a pension and health benefits...
...Women almost one-third of the workfi have worked to overcome the problems associated of the country's 229 main ti with their lack of political experience by providing women...
...The differing approaches to this key question not only hindered cooperation between women's organizations but also caused internal tensions and divisions...
...Women who went out to work for the first time became aware of the need not only for child care facilities, but also for vocational training...
...In the 1985 election in Uruguay, for the first time since 1942, not a single woman was elected to parliament...
...to come from outside and install herself in the office here-we can do it women were used to dictators ourselves...
Vol. 27 • July 1993 • No. 1
