Assess Women’S Participation In Socio-Political Organisations And In The Economy.
Assess women’s participation in socio-political organisations and in the economy.
Women in Chile began to get involved in trade unions in the northern mining regions of Chile. By the 1920s, women began organisations devoted to their political and economic rights and these organisations, especially political organisations began to gain momentum with women demanding the for universal suffrage, which was granted to them in 1949. With women becoming enfranchised, the women’s organisations lost their drive as many felt they had achieved their purpose.
In both the 1964 and 1970 elections, many upper and middle class ‘conservative’ women began a campaign against Popular Unity (Unidad Popular) and Salvador Allende. The group responsible for the campaign was Women’s Action of Chile, whose members handed out anti UP leaflets stating that they were a Communist threat to the women and children of Chile, saying that in socialist/communist countries many men had been taken, tortured, killed or disappeared and if Allende won the election that this would happen in Chile as well. They ran radio, leaflet and poster campaigns encourage women to support Jorge Alessandri and the Christian Democrats.
However Alessandri’s campaign did not just rely on the anti-Communist rhetoric, he also promised to make ’women the base of his administration ’ he intended to give government positions to women.
On September 5 1970, Chile became the first country to democratically elect a ‘Marxist’ government. With Allende becoming President, led to three kinds of responses: enthusiasm, by his supporters and leftists everywhere, ambivalence, by those who did not believe that he could change the status quo and alarm by those on the Right, who believed it signalled the end of class privilege. Many upper/middle class women feared with the election of Allende as President, would set off ‘Marxist hordes’ would seize their properties on behalf...
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