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The status of women in Chile has made improved over time. Women's societal roles have historically been impacted by traditional gender roles and a patriarchal culture, but throughout the twentieth century women increasingly involved themselves in politics and protest, resulting in provisions to the constitution to uphold equality between men and women and prohibit sex discrimination.

Women's educational attainment, workforce participation, and rights have improved to be more equal to those of men, especially in the recent decades since Chile became a democracy again in 1990. Chile finally legalized divorce in 2004 and is also one of the only countries to have elected a female president. However, Chilean women still face many economic and political challenges, including income disparity, high rates of domestic violence, and the lingering gender roles.

History of women
Women were granted the right to vote in 1931 and 1949 during Chile's presidential era. Also during the era, thousands of women protested against socialist president Salvador Allende in the March of the Empty Pots and Pans. While under Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian regime, women also participated in las protestas, protests against Allende's plebiscite in which women voted "no." During Chile's time under dictator Pinochet, the state of women's legal rights fell behind most of Latin America, even though Chile had one of the strongest economies in South America. Chile returned to democracy in 1990, leading to changes in women's lives and roles within society. Since the return to democracy, Chile's government has invested more political and economic resources to expand social welfare programs than had been done before. The Concertación political party has been in power since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship, and from 2006-2010, Michelle Bachelet of the party served as the first female President of Chile.

Gender roles
Traditional gender role beliefs are prevalent in Chilean society, specifically the ideas that women should focus on motherhood and be submissive to men. A 2010 study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that 62 percent of Chileans are opposed to full gender equality. Many of those surveyed expressed the belief that women should limit themselves to the traditional roles of mother and wife.

Legal rights
Currently, women have many of the same rights as men. The National Women's Service (SERNAM) is charged with protecting women's legal rights in the public sector.

Marriage
Until recently women lost their right to administer their own assets once they were married and husbands received all of the wealth, but now a woman can administer her own assets. A couple can also sign a legal agreement before marriage so that all assets would continue to be owned by the one who brought them to the marriage.

Previously the Chilean Civil Code mandated that wives must live with and be faithful and obedient to their husbands, but now it is not law. A married woman cannot be head of the household or head of the family in the same way as a man; however, married women are not required by law to obey their husbands.

Divorce
The New Civil Marriage Law was introduced as a bill in 1995; although there had been previous divorce bills before, this one achieved enough conservative and liberal support to pass by being more "pro-family." Chile at last legalized divorce in 2004, overturning an 1884 legal code. Before the legalization of divorce, the only way to leave a marriage was to obtain a civil annulment, and annulments were only granted by telling the civil registrar that the spouse had lied in some way concerning the marriage license, thereby voiding the marriage contract.

Property
In rural Chile, inheritance is the principle way in which land is acquired by both men and women, whether the land has titles or not. Sometimes women cannot claim their inheritance to land without titles because the cost of legal documents is too high. Sons and daughters have equal inheritance rights to moveable and immovable property from their parents.

Unmarried men and women have equal ownership rights to moveable and immoveable property.

In marriage there are three types of assets: those of the husband, those of the wife, and the common assets that pertain to both. Land and houses in a marriage continue to be the property of the person who brought them to the marriage, but in order to sell them, both the husband and wife must sign. In the case of divorce, both the man and woman are entitled to ownership of the marital home. In the case of the death of a spouse, the surviving spouse, regardless of gender, has equal inheritance rights to the marital home. If there is no will when the husband dies, the wife is given an equal category as the children for inheritance. Before marriage, a couple can sign a legal document separating all assets so that the woman and man each administer her or his own; in this case, the husband cannot control his wife's assets.

If women work outside the home independent of their husbands, acquire personal assets, and can prove that they came by these assets through their independent work, then these working women can accumulate these assets as their own, unable to be touched by husbands.

Suffrage
Women were granted the right to vote in municipal elections in 1931 and obtained the right to vote in national elections in 1949, resulting in their ability to vote under the same equal conditions as men and increasing women's participation in politics.

Family law
Both Chilean men and women qualify for a family allowance if they have dependent children under the age of eighteen (or twenty-four if in school). There are differences in entitlement requirements for the spouse-related family allowance since a man qualifies for a family allowance if he has a dependent wife, but a woman only qualifies for a family allowance if her husband is disabled. Until a reform of paternity laws in 1998, children born outside marriage had less right to parental financial support and inheritance than children born within marriage. A bill was passed in 2007 to give mothers direct access to child support payments.

Working mothers of a certain low socioeconomic status and with proof of an employment contract and working hours receive subsidized child care through legislation passed in 1994. This system excludes: women whose household income is too high, unemployed women, women working in the informal sector, and women whose jobs are not by contract. Chile offers paid maternity leave for women working in the formal sector, paying women 100 percent of their salary during the leave, and also allows women a one-hour feeding break each day until the child has reached the age of two. Female workers unattached to the formal market and without an employment contract do not receive paid maternity leave.

Education
Women's literacy rates almost match those of men, with 95.6 percent of women being able to read, versus 95.8 percent of men. Forty seven and a half percent of Chilean women attend college. Chilean law mandates compulsory primary education for children, boys and girls. In 2007, the World Bank declared that enrollment levels for boys and girls in primary and secondary education were at a "virtual parity." Women's education in Chile is generally higher than neighboring countries. In higher education, as of 2002, women had similar attendance rates as men, with women at 47.5 percent attendance, versus men at 52.5 percent.

Participation
Chile has the lowest rate of female participation in the work force in all of Latin America but this has been steadily increasing over the years. Approximately 47 percent of Chilean women work, versus an average of 53 percent across Latin America. Women between the ages of 25 and 34 tend to have jobs, whereas older women do not. Despite the fact that 47.5 percent of students in college are women, many still choose to be homemakers rather than join the workforce. This causes Chile to rank low amongst upper-middle class countries regarding women in the work force despite higher educational training. Internationally, poorer women tend to work more; however, in Chile, poorer women make up a small share of the workforce. Twenty-six percent of poorer women in Chile work, unlike 57 percent of women in higher socioeconomic levels.

Women's low roles in the workforce stem from various factors, including the country's dependance on natural resources and male-dominated industries where women are still slowly finding opportunities for work. In the highly active Chilean wine industry, one in three winemakers are women, and in 2010, an estimated one-third of enology students were women. A 2004 study shows that 81.4 percent of women work in the tertiary sector.

Formal and informal work
Women have increasingly moved out of unpaid domestic work and into the paid formal and informal labor markets. Many female workers are in Chile's informal sector because national competition for jobs has increased the amount of low-skill jobs.

In 1998, 44.8 percent of working-aged women in Chile worked in the informal sector while only 32.9 percent of men worked informally.

Income gap
For jobs that do not require higher education, women make 20 percent less money on average than men. For jobs requiring a university degree, the gap in pay increases to 40 percent. Women without a university degree make 83 percent of the income men make without a university degree. The quadrennial 2004 National Socio-Economic Survey and World Bank report in 2007 say that the overall gender income gap stands at 33 percent (since women make 67 percent of men's salaries).

Michelle Bachelet's Presidency
Michelle Bachelet was the first female president of Chile, leading the country between 2006 and 2010. During her presidency, Bachelet increased the budget of the National Women's Service (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer, SERNAM) and helped the institution gain funding from the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Her administration had an active role in furthering opportunities and policies for and about women, creating or improving child care, pension reform and breastfeeding laws. During her presidency, Bachelet appointed a cabinet that was 50 percent female. Unlike neighboring Argentina, where 41.6 percent of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies is made up of women, only 15 percent of Chile's lower house is made up of female representatives. Chile has no government mandate requiring that women must make up a certain percentage of party candidates, but certain political parties have their own quotas.

Currently Bachelet is the head of United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

Female participation in politics
Women were not involved in politics until 1934, when they could first use their municipal vote. The municipal, and later national, vote caused women to involve themselves in politics more than before, pressuring the government and political parties. With women's increased political importance, many parties established women's sections for support and tried to pursue women's votes, though it would take years for political parties to truly view women as important to politics.

On December 1, 1971 thousands of women who were against the newly elected Salvador Allende marched through Santiago to protest government policies and Fidel Castro's visiting of Chile. This march, known as the March of the Empty Pots and Pans, brought together many conservative and some liberal women as a force in Chilean politics, and in 1977 Augusto Pinochet decreed the day of the march to be National Women's Day. Women also made their voices heard in the late 1980s when 52 percent of the national electorate was female, and 51.2 percent of women voted "no" in Augusto Pinochet's plebiscite. The women in these popular protests are considered to have played a central role in increasing national concern with the history of women's political activism.

As of 2006, Chile was lower than eight other Latin American countries in regards to women in political positions. With only a few women legislators, sustaining attention to the topic of women's rights a difficult task, especially in the Senate, where there are fewer female representatives than in the Chamber of Deputies.

Women's political representation is low but is on the rise in many political parties, and there is growing support for a quota law concerning women's representation. The progressive parties of the Left have greater openness to the participation of women, evident in the Party for Democracy's and Socialist Party's quotas for women's representation as candidates for internal party office.

In 2009, activists demanded that presidential candidates develop reforms that would improve work conditions for women. Reforms included maternity leave, flexible work schedules and job training. Aimed at improving women's work opportunities, former president Michelle Bachelet made it illegal to ask for a job applicants gender on applications and for employers to demand pregnancy tests be taken by employees.

Policy
The National Women's Service (SERNAM) has noticed that it is easier to get politicians to support and pass poverty-alleviation programs aimed at poor women than proposals that challenge gender relations. Much of Chile's legislation concerning women's rights has been pushed by SERNAM: Between 1992 and 2010, sixty-four legislative proposals to expand women's legal equality were introduced by SERNAM.

Historically the progressive parties of the Left have drawn more attention to women's rights. Yet many political parties insincerely support women's agenda and the concept of gender equality, instead leaving any action to be taken by SERNAM our nongovernmental organizations.

Although SERNAM exists to aid women, there is no non-discrimination clause in the Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile.

State
The National Women's Service is the political institution created in 1991 that crafts executive bills concerning women's rights. Its Spanish name is Servicio Nacional de la Mujer, or SERNAM; it has established a program to aid female heads of households, a program for prevention of violence against women, and a network of information centers that focus on the issues of women's rights. Its presence in Chile is important because it was established by law and is a permanent part of Chile's state structure. As an institution it tends to focus much of its attention on certain segments of women: low-income women heads of households, women seasonal workers, domestic violence prevention, and teen pregnancy prevention.

A common complaint that SERNAM has is that the top appointees are not women linked to the feminist community. The institution also has restrictions when it comes to policy regarding women due to its state ties, as seen in 2000 when SERNAM favored but would not explicitly support the bill to legalize divorce because it was under the leadership of the Christian Democratic party. In 2002 it was finally allowed to support the bill.

Research and activism
Many of Chile's women's groups function outside the state sphere.

Centers for research began to emerge in the later part of the twentieth century, including the Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (The Women's Study Center) and La Morada. The Women's Study Center is a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and conducts research, trains women, has a consulting program, and tries to increase women's political participation. La Morada is another nonprofit organization that works to expand the rights of women through political involvement, education, culture, and efforts to eradicate violence.

International relations
Chile ratified the United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1988, internationally declaring support for women's human rights.

Domestic violence
Domestic violence in Chile is a serious issue affecting a large percentage of the population, especially among lower income demographics. The Intrafamily Violence Law passed in 1994 was the first political measure to address violence in the home, but because the law would not pass without being accepted by both sides, the law is weak when it comes to addressing victim protection and punishment for abusers. A 2004 SERNAM study reported that 50 percent of married women in Chile had suffered spousal abuse, 34 percent reported having suffered physical violence, and 16 percent reported psychological abuse. According to another study from 2004, 90 percent of low-income women in Chile experience some type of domestic violence. Due to the high prevalence of domestic violence, many Chilean women accept it as normal. The legalization of divorce in 2004 won the approval of women throughout the country, especially those concerned about domestic violence, as women were previously unable to escape abusive relationships due to the divorce laws.

From January to November 2005, 76,000 cases of family violence were reported to the Carabineros; 67,913 were reported by women, 6,404 by men, and approximately 1,000 by children.

Rape
Rape, including spousal rape, is a criminal offense. Penalties for rape range from five to 15 years' imprisonment, and the government generally enforced the law. The age for statutory rape is 14. The law protects the privacy and safety of the person making the charge. From January to November, police received reports of 1,926 cases of rape, compared with 2,451 cases in all of 2005. Experts believed that most rape cases went unreported. The Ministry of Justice and the PICH had several offices specifically to provide counseling and assistance in rape cases. A number of NGOs, such as La Morada Corporation for Women, provided counseling for rape victims.

Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment generally was recognized as a problem. A 2005 law against sexual harassment provides protection and financial compensation to victims and penalizes harassment by employers or co-workers. From January through September, the Labor Directorate had received 244 complaints of sexual harassment; 205 of these cases involved harassment by a supervisor or employer. During 2005 there were 264 such complaints--254 made by women and 10 by men; 238 of these cases involved a supervisor or employer. Most of the complaints were resolved quickly, resulting in action against the harasser in 33 percent of cases.

Discrimination
A 2005 study by Corporacion Humana and the University of Chile's Institute of Public Affairs revealed that 87 percent of women surveyed felt that women suffered discrimination. According to the survey, 95 percent believed women faced discrimination in the labor market, 67 percent believed they faced discrimination in politics, 61 percent felt that women were discriminated against by the media, and 54 percent within the family.

Family
Today, younger women are opting out of marriage and having fewer children than their predecessors. A 2002 study reported that urban women average 2.1 children per woman with women living in rural areas having more children, at 2.9. As of the 1990s, both urban and rural women were averaging fewer children than previously. For those women who do have children, after former president Michelle Bachelet's childcare mandates, childcare centers that provide free services are four times more numerous. Nursing mothers also have the legal right to breastfeed during the workday. Women are less likely to seek divorces and marriage annulments.

Health & sexuality
Women in Chile have long life expectancy, living an average of 80.8 years, about six years longer than men. Sex education is rarely taught in schools and is considered "taboo" by many Chilean families. Friends and family usually are the main source of sex education.

HIV/AIDS
While cases of HIV and AIDS in women have stabilized internationally, Chile has seen a rise in HIV/AIDS infection. Social and cultural factors have increased women's chances of getting HIV/AIDS, including the lack of access to reproductive healthcare. Societal beliefs about traditional women's roles as mothers leads to women being less likely to use contraceptives, increasing the opportunity for disease. Chilean women also often feel subordinate to men due to these traditional belief systems, making women less likely to negotiate for the use of condoms. In 2007, 28 percent of people with HIV/AIDS in Chile were women. Numbers of women living with HIV is lower than those with AIDS. A study by Vivo Positivo showed that 85 percent of women living with HIV/AIDS reported that they had little to no education or information about HIV/AIDS until diagnosis.

A 2004 study found that Chilean women with HIV/AIDS were susceptible to coerced sterilization. 56 percent of HIV-positive Chilean women reported being pressured by healthcare workers to prevent pregnancy by being sterilized. Of the women who chose to be sterilized, half were forced or persuaded to do so. Women victims of domestic abuse face a higher risk of getting HIV. 56 percent of women who have HIV had been victims of domestic abuse before their diagnosis and 77 percent of women with HIV/AIDS, in 2004, reported experiencing some form of violence in the form of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and rape.

Abortion
Chile has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world. One of the last acts of the military government under Pinochet was to outlaw abortion in all circumstances. Chile's abortion law criminalizes abortion even when it would save a pregnant woman's life. Therapeutic abortion was legal between 1931 and 1989 but is now is illegal under all circumstances. There have been proposed bills from Chilean legislators and [NGO]s on abortion and reproductive rights, but they have never been passed. Estimates range between 120,000 and 160,000 for the number of Chilean women who have illegal abortions each year. Chile is considered to have one of the highest abortion rates in Latin America. Every year, nearly 40,000 teenage girls become pregnant. Emergency contraception was banned in 2008, making the distribution of emergency contraception illegal under all circumstances.

A 1989 survey found that 75.8 percent of its respondents believed that abortion should be legally permitted if the mother's life is in danger or the child would be born deformed. More recently in 2000, 77.9 percent of survey respondents said abortion should be permitted if the mother's life is in danger, and 55.1 percent of respondents said abortion should be permitted if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

Notable Chilean women

 * Literature

Chile has a rich literary history, being described as the "Land of the Poets." In 1945, Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other notable female authors from Chile include Isabel Allende, Marta Brunet, María Luisa Bombal, Marcela Paz, and Mercedes Valdivieso.


 * Politics

From 2006 until 2010, Michelle Bachelet served as the first woman president of Chile. In the 2006 election, Soledad Alvear, a Christian Democrat, ran for the presidency against Bachelet.