A specter is haunting Chile - the specter of feminism

Olea, Raquel; Olga Grau y Francisca Pérez. El género en apuros. Discursos públicos: Cuarta Conferencia Mundial de la Mujer. Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2000.

Olea et al. examine the tensions in Chile when democratic government representatives were to attend the IV World Women Conference at Beijing in 1995, identifying the main actors that participated and the discourses circulated. The analysis of these public debates makes visible some of the cultural logics of the “transition”, and how these logics shape the dynamics between actors. The debates revolve around the Plan de Igualdad de Oportunidades para las Mujeres, the official document that stated the government's position towards women's and gender issues published in 1994. Many of the criticisms to this document had to do with the ambiguity of some terms it contained, such as “gender” and “different types of families”, which —it was argued— could potentially be used as disguises to undermine monogamy and heterosexuality.

According to Grau's discourse analysis of media texts, the arguments of the conservative right in Chile explicitly suggest the state as a totalitarian entity imposing an ideological agenda of “radical feminism” and “renovated socialism”, which would go against a “democratic, pluralist, Christian country as Chile” (32), where individual freedom cannot be alienated. The government early declared that just as in the previous conference in Cairo, they had no intention of legislating for abortion.
Within the conservative-religious groups, there were female conservative leaders who made a point of speaking on behalf of the Chilean woman to defend their “natural” role. They accused the state of intervening in women's individual right to choose for herself her own path. Regarding the document of the government's position, they denounced its feminist content, pointing out that this ideology is characteristic of the Northern Hemisphere (North America and Europe). In this way, they argued that the state's document would express “a desire of imposing by means of the law, a noticeably liberal lifestyle, linked to a model of womanhood that does not agree with the values characteristic of our culture” (40). These actors also articulated a distinction between “good” (moderate, Christian) feminism and “bad” feminism (radical, based on “gender theory").

Female representatives from the Unión Demócrata Independiente (“Independent Democratic Union”, populist right-wing party linked to the extremely conservative Opus Dei Catholic faction) and Renovación Nacional (“National Renovation”) argued that through the concept of “gender”, what was trying to be legitimated is the subversion and elimination of natural differences between men and women, to introduce the idea that people, regardless of their sex, can live as feminine, masculine, androgynous and in-differentiated beings, terminology which is defined as monstrous and “malefic”.
The demonization of feminism, represented as a totalitarian ideology against family, femininity, and motherhood, does not find a counterposition that can respond effectively to this misrepresentation in the public space where the debates take place, they conclude.