INT’L WOMEN’S DAY-CHILE: When Feminism Benefits the Government

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Mar 7 2004 (IPS) - The Chilean government started early in its campaign to commemorate International Women’s Day, Mar. 8, which this year has unique connotations in this country as the defence and foreign affairs ministers, both women, consolidate their places as potential candidates for president.

“Why not? Chile needs the strength of women” is the theme of the week-long celebration of Mar. 8, although under protest from the opposition right-wing parties, which consider it underhanded advertising in favour of Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear and Defence Minister Michelle Bachelet.

The two lead in popularity polls with respect to the rest of the possible presidential candidates of the governing centre-left coalition, Concertación por la Democracia. The elections are slated for December 2005, and will choose the successor to President Ricardo Lagos, a moderate socialist.

According to the trends seen in the polls, Bachelet, of the Socialist Party (PS), would be the most likely rival of Joaquín Lavín, mayor of the Santiago-Centro municipality and undisputed presidential candidate of the right-wing coalition Alianza por Chile.

Foreign minister Alvear, of the Christian Democracy (DC) party, is close behind Bachelet in the public opinion surveys. Lavín surpasses both of them, but if the governing coalition fields only one candidate, as it has done since 1989, the sum of the women candidates’ votes would defeat the conservative candidate.

The Concertación por la Democracia, made up of the PS, DC, Pro-Democracy Party and the Radical Social Democratic Party, has governed Chile since democracy was restored in March 1990, after 17 years under the iron-fisted Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

The existence of two women “pre-candidates” to the presidency “is a sign of development of women’s participation in Chilean social life,” socialist lawmaker Carlos Montes told IPS. He considers it “very likely” that in March 2006 Lagos will pass the presidential sash to Bachelet or Alvear.

They are not the first women presidential candidates in Chile. Gladys Marín, of the Communist Party, and ecologist Sara Larraín competed in the first round elections in 1999, though it was Lagos who went on to defeat Lavín in the run-off in 2000.

The candidacies of Marín and Larraín were for minor parties focused on getting their message heard, while in the cases of Alvear and Bachelet, either has a real chance of victory.

José Ortiz, secretary general of Chile’s largest trade union, CUT, says it is an historic situation. “A half-century ago, women didn’t even have the right to vote in Chile,” he pointed out in a conversation with IPS.

Women’s suffrage was instituted in 1949 in this South American nation.

The National Women’s Service (SERNAM), a ministry-level government agency, abstained from including Bachelet and Alvear on the posters and signs for its campaign promoting International Women’s Day. Activities related to this date began here on Mar. 1.

In the publicity for Mar. 8 appear images of women carrying out activities that are traditionally considered “men’s work”, such as football player, ‘carabinero’ guard at the presidential palace, and subway train conductor, among others, including Juanita Parra, who is the drummer in the band Los Jaivas.

SERNAM Minister Cecilia Pérez denied that the Women’s Day campaign is veiled publicity for Bachelet and Alvear, and stressed that the aim “is to encourage reflection, debate and, above all, to make visible the contribution of Chilean women to the country’s development.”

But legislative Deputy Julio Dittborn, of Lavín’s party, the conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI), says the campaign is an “abuse of authority”, political use of the international event to benefit the candidacies of the two female ministers.

The Lagos administration is taking advantage of International Women’s Day to carry out “subliminal propaganda” to favour Alvear and Bachelet, said Sebastián Piñera, president of the National Renovation Party, UDI’s partner in the Alianza por Chile.

Pérez rebuffed the accusations and said the right-wing coalition is “overreacting” and attempting to initiate “an absolutely artificial debate.”

“The fact that we have women pre-candidates is wonderful, but it is not the meaning of International Women’s Day,” Deputy Rodolfo Seguel, of the DC, told IPS. “There are other countries that have women presidents or that have had them in the past.”

CUT leader Ortiz said that on Mar. 8 the important thing is to “put much more energy into demanding an end to all forms of discrimination.”

“It is essential to eliminate wage discrimination and the discrimination that society itself maintains against women, and that is not resolved by the fact that we have women as pre-candidates to the presidency,” said the labour leader.

Lorena Pizzaro, head of the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared, told IPS that in her opinion the relevance of Mar. 8 is not found in the roles of Alvear and Bachelet.

“For us women, it is important to underline the fight of Chilean women throughout history. In the years of the Pinochet dictatorship, it was women who took to the streets and stood face to face with the repressive forces,” she said.

According to Tatiana Rojas, of the Communist Party’s Women’s Front, this year Mar. 8 “has special meaning, but not because there are two women presidential candidates, but rather because Chile has lost sovereignty with the signing of free trade agreements, and one of the groups most affected by those treaties are women.”

The free trade treaty that Chile signed with the United States, in effect since last year, includes labour flexibilisation and other measures, such as reforms in the rules for maternity leave, reversing the rights women had achieved, she said.

“All of the women in Chile would be happy with any women in the presidency, and especially one of the two candidates who stand out now, because they are both excellent,” Rosa Callejas, 33, an administrative secretary, told IPS.

Housewife Gladys Aguilar, 50, says the fact that there are two viable pre-candidates to the presidency “provides an opportunity for all women to realise that changes are under way in Chile.”

Antonio Cerda, 37, who works in the tourism industry, says, “Women have always been valued, but not recognised. Now that path is opening, and it is going well. I think very soon – why not? – we are going to have a woman president.”

But, says 35-year-old bank employee Cristián González: “I wouldn’t be so sure these pre-candidates (Bachelet and Alvear) will reach port.”

“I wouldn’t say that Chile is a ‘machista’ (sexist) country, because it has made a lot of progress in overcoming that, but I would say it is a very traditional country, where they wouldn’t elect a woman as president of the republic. If you hear otherwise, it is just ‘politically correct’ words,” he said.