A Survey on La Mujer Nueva and the MEMCH letters: alliances and demands in the context of women emancipation in Chile

Abstract

The following paper proposes a critical survey on the legacy of the Chilean Women’s Pro Emancipation Movement (MEMCH) through the analysis of their letters and main publication, La Mujer Nueva newspaper, during the first half of the twentieth century in Chile. We seek to reveal the alliances behind this all-female institution, as well as delve into their demands and the purpose of their struggle through the words expressed by members and leaders alike. Given the general scarcity of public women’s testimonies during the first half of the twentieth century in the country, this corpus of letters and articles is a particularly interesting and relevant piece of Chilean literary and journalistic history. Through the analysis of these texts we can attest to the common imaginaries’ Chilean women from all social and economic backgrounds shared, both in terms of objectives to reach, as well as challenges to tackle. We will seek to shed light on these issues from the theoretical standpoint of Carol Gilligan’s “ethics of care” and Miguel Abensour’s “education of desire”, focusing in the affective strategies deployed by Chilean women to reach their ideal of creating a “new woman” for Chile.