Catholicism, Anticlericalism and the Quest for Women's Sufferag
CATHOLICISM, ANTICLERICALISM, AND THE QUEST FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE IN CHILE Erika Maza Valenzuela Working Paper #214 - December 1995 Erika Maza Valenzuela, Academic Coordinator of the Kellogg Institute, is completing her dissertation on “Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Chile, 1874–1953,” at Saint Antony's College, Oxford University. The author is very grateful to her thesis supervisor Alan Angell for his advice and many incisive comments on previous drafts of this paper. She also wishes to express her gratitude to Samuel Valenzuela for sharing his knowledge of Chilean history and for his encouragement and belief in the significance of this research. Her gratitude extends as well to many professors, colleagues, and friends at the Latin American Centre of Saint Antony's College, at the Kellogg Institute, and in Chile, especially Alan Knight, Juan Maiguashca, Eduardo Posada, Carlos Malamud, Iván Jaksic, Caroline Domingo, Robert Pelton, CSC, Robert Fishman, Sol Serrano, and Carolina Fernández. 2 ABSTRACT Catholic countries typically enfranchised women later than Protestant ones, and analysts have long argued that this delay was due to the influence of Catholic political and Church leaders as well as to the effects of a Catholic culture. By examining the history of the extension of suffrage to women and women's political participation in Chile since the mid-nineteenth century, this paper challenges that widely held notion. It shows that Catholic and Conservative leaders were the earliest voices in favor of extending suffrage to women. It also shows that Catholic women were involved in political and social affairs from an early date in the country's history as an independent nation, and that they developed feminist views.
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