Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964-1973 (review)
projects, the union movement, and the ideological polarization of national politics changed, or failed to change, relations between men and women in rural Chile. She concludes that although the agrarian program of the Christian Democrats benefited women in a number of ways, their model of “ ‘family uplift’ translated gender inequalities and sexual hierarchies into national policy as natural facts” (pp. 207–8). The subsequent Unidad Popular’s “patriarchal stance toward women coexisted with visionary plans to revolutionize female roles” (p. 219). Tinsman is clearly correct that the literature on the Chilean agrarian reform, the rural labor movement, and the breakdown of the Chilean political system in 1973 has neglected the role of women. Likewise, there is no question that policy makers and analysts were little concerned with “patriarchy and what makes it tick.” Her study leaves no doubt that women’s activities mattered to the agrarian reform and that many women benefited from it, despite the simultaneous reinforcement of certain aspects of traditional, patriarchal gender relations. More generally, Tinsman creatively tells an untold story: the many ways that agrarian reform changed gender relations and how these changes reverberated in national and local politics and society. What is not convincingly demonstrated is that these two Chilean governments attempted to refashion gender relations as Tinsman suggests: that their agrarian reforms had a “gendered mission,” either to reinforce existing gender relations or to revolutionize them. Most Chileans, including government officials and policy makers, did not associate agrarian reform with changing family relations or questioning patriarchy. In fact, one reason that Tinsman’s work is so welcome is that “government officials and union leaders rarely mentioned women” (p. 8), as is also true for most previous research on the agrarian reform.