After four years under Michelle Bachelet, Chilean voters are expected to vote out her party. However, her legacy remains significant. Oliver Balch considers how far gender attitudes have changed under the doctor-turned-politician
In the heart of Santiago's shopping district, a giggling group of professional young women are comparing plastic dildos. Their laughter continues as they browse the sex toys and lubricant gels in the Solo Adultos sex shop. After lengthy discussion, they settle on some fluffy handcuffs and a pair of Penthouse bunny ears.
"We get lots of hen parties in here", says Tatiana Martinez, the shop assistant, pointing to the female office workers as they head off towards a nearby nightclub. "But plenty of women come with their husbands, too," she adds. "Women are becoming a lot more open about sex these days. And a lot more demanding."
Sex shops are a comparatively new arrival to the Chilean high street. Until 2001, pornographic films were banned. Only five years ago, so was divorce. Today, Latin America's most straight-laced country is beginning to relax a little. As it does so, the role of women and gender stereotyping are slowly beginning to change.
The cultural shift is most noticeable among Chile's younger generations. Outside Cherry Bar in the coastal town of Valparaiso, a queue of teenagers straggles around the block. The girls are dressed in mini-skirts and crop tops, despite the cold sea breeze. Once inside, there's a decision to be made: hetero, bi or gay. Cherry boasts a floor for each. Many teens visit all three.
"There's more sexual experimentation among young girls these days. The new generation are much more liberal and liberated," says Erika Montecinos, editor of the lesbian magazine Breaking the Silence. Official statistics back her up. Five percent of girls today under 18 years old have had more than one sexual partner, more than double the number from a decade ago. The span between dating and sexual activity (seven and a half months) has also shortened by 13.9% every year over the last ten years.
"Girls no longer want to wait until marriage to start having sex. There are lots of reasons why. They face less parental control for one thing. And then there's the influence of television and the media", explains Ximena Luengo, a sexual health expert at the University of Chile.
It's not just the younger generation that are enjoying a belated sexual revolution. SYO, Chile's first and only swingers bar, counts middle-aged couples among the mainstay of its clientele. Most are married with children and conventional jobs.
"As women, Chilean society never prepares you to be honest about your sexual preferences. Now couples are adventuring together," observes Sandra, SYO's 37-year-old owner.
Nor is it just in the bedroom where gender relations are undergoing a metamorphosis. Women are making their presence felt in the workplace thanks to an increase in flexible working practices and a battery of new anti-discrimination laws.
"The traditional idea of a man going out to work and the woman staying at home is changing. Women need to work and they want to work," explains Sonia Montano, a specialist in gender development at the UN-backed Economic Commission for Latin America.
High levels of female education help. An employed woman in Chile is likely to have 11 and a half years of schooling. In Brazil, the average is nine. In the corporate world, Chilean women typically study one more year than their male counterparts. Women are increasingly confident that personal merit rather than private wealth or good connections will get them ahead, according to sociologist Teresa Valdes. "This development has to do with the empowerment of women today, with the belief that 'I will be the best," she adds.
Chilean woman might not be burning their bras but they are certainly loosening the shoulder straps. So why the sudden change?
Women's rights groups are almost unanimous in their response: the Bachelet factor. Chile's first-ever female president, 57-year-old Michelle Bachelet, is credited with pushing gender issues up the political agenda.
On assuming power in March 2006, she appointed female ministers to half her cabinet. She also gave the national ministry for women a long-overdue budgetary boost. Her motives were not impersonal. A separated mother, she juggled bringing up three children while carving out a successful career in Chile's male-dominated medical profession.
"Given the quantity of women in power under this administration, we can no longer say we are excluded", Laura Albornoz, Chile's women's minister.
She is quick to reel off the achievements of Bachelet's administration; a more than fivefold increase in the number of free creches, a best practice code on flexible working; occupational training for 36,000 female heads of household.
"Many of the seeds we are sowing now, we won't be able to harvest immediately", Albornoz admits, "But there's no stepping back now."
"No hay marcha atras" ("No step backwards"). It's a phrase borrowed from her boss. Bachelet has another favourite saying. Young girls used to dream of growing up to be nurses or teachers, it runs. Now they aspire to becoming president.
With elections today and Bachelet constitutionally unable to stand for another four-year term, gender rights advocates are turning their minds to her legacy. "The very fact of her presidency signifies an important cultural shift … It's helped foster a change in what women think they can do," says Maria Elena Valenzuela, a specialist on gender issues at the International Labout Organisation.
The argument is laced with a dose of realism and a dozen provisos. Women's organisations are forced to admit that Chile in many ways remains a profoundly unequal, chauvinist society. Attitudes towards Bachelet herself prove that. In the street, everyday Chileans refer to her as La Gordis ("the Fat Woman"). "Baywatch Babe" ran one sarcastic headline in reference to recent photos of her in a swimsuit.
Assessments of her political performance reflect similar gender biases. Consensus-building, listening, warm, inclusive – these are adjectives associated with Bachelet's political style. Rather than signs of progressive leadership, Chileans interpret them as evidence of dillydallying. "She makes commissions," her opponents like to say, "not decisions."
The criticism is evidence of Chile's "political immaturity", according to Soledad Teixido, chief executive of the non-profit organisation ProHumana. She blames the country's history of autocratic, military rulers. Chile's last military government ended as recently as 1990, when Augusto Pinochet handed over power after 17 years.
"Our country isn't ready for a female style of leadership. She's not cuddly as the maternal stereotype demands, nor does she rule with a heavy hand. Ridiculous though it is, that looks bad on all of us," Teixido laments.
Bachelet's strong performance during the global recession has done much to turn around the early criticism of her governing style. She leaves office with record approval ratings of around 80%. Two years ago, it dropped to below 40%.
Full gender parity in Chile remains a long way off. Less than two in five women (38.5%) work, the lowest percentage in the continent. Women earn on average four-fifths (79%) that of male employees. Boardrooms and unions remain Clubes de Toby, the Chilean term for men-only institutions. Political representation is little better. Women number less than one in eight (13%) parliamentarians. In neighbouring Argentina, the figure is three times higher. Even Bachelet's 50-50 cabinet is no longer a paradigm of gender balance after a number of high-profile reshuffles.
Recent opportunities to strike a fresh blow for the female cause have also come and gone. Moves to make the morning-after pill freely available, for example, were quashed by the (all-male) constitutional court. Efforts to establish a mandatory quota of women candidates in political parties have also failed to materialise.
Women's groups valiantly press on. They take their victories where they can: contraceptive use being officially sanctioned in the fight against HIV/AIDS (until recently, government advice led on monogamy and pre-marital chastity); a high-profile campaign against domestic violence; a basic pension for housewives.
At their most optimistic, gender experts see Chile moving towards a softer "neo-machista" society. Now men cook, albeit only at weekends or for dinner parties. No longer is it de moda for husbands to boast about hitting their wives or having affairs. In politically correct Chile, even the organisers of the local Miss World contest claim to be "feminists".
Yet a change of language shouldn't be mistaken for a change of opinion. "Culturally, we're not seen as subjects, but as objects," points out Sonia Montecino, the first female director of Chile's National Archive.
Even as objects, women don't have it easy. In Chile, the religious and secular are fighting it out for primacy. On the one hand, the Catholic church espouses conservative virtues of piety, motherhood and dutiful sacrifice. On the other, the daily tabloids present women as silicon-enhanced, hyper-sexualised bonbones ("bimbos").
The contradiction is lodged deep within the male psyche. Office workers think nothing of popping out for their morning latte to one of Santiago's myriad cafe con piernas, a mix between Starbucks and Stringfellows. Fathers will gift breast implants to their teenage daughters, but expect them to remain virgins until marriage.
But does the fault lie entirely with Chile's chauvinist men? "The M of machismo begins with the M of mother," runs a popular Chilean saying. Feminists admit women can also be responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes. "Women like it that men are machista. It gives them security. People don't like things changing too quickly," says Maria de los Angeles, director of Chile's Elite model agency.
Women are also put off building a career for fear of becoming "masculinised". If there's a choice to be made between staying late in the office or eating dinner with their children, they will invariably opt for the latter, explains Maria Marcet, deputy manager for social responsibility at Spanish-owned bank Santander. "To an extent, they [make] their own glass ceiling."
Talk of women's rights remains predominantly an urban, middle-class preoccupation. Chile's rural and indigenous communities treat feminist ideas with suspicion. Fifty-nine-year old Juana Millavil, a Mapuche Indian from a reservation near Temuco in southern Chile, has never gone on holiday. Without complaint, she rises at dawn to a full day of household chores.
"It's not good to be too feminist. Culturally, the man is the head of the family and deserves respect," she says, stirring a pot of stew for her husband's lunch.
She has an opinion on Santiago's hen parties, too: "Many women are taking advantage of their recent liberation. They go out and cheat on their husbands." At Solo Adultos, Tatiana dismisses such talk as belonging to the "old Chile". All the same, she has yet to tell her two children where she works. She prefers for their schoolmates not to know. Or their mothers.
Using materials of the site the reference on GINSC with the indication of the author is obligatory The Portal GINSC is supported by the Kvinna til Kvinna Foundation
