Re(thinking) the Popular Unity:

State, Labor and Gender on the chilean road to socialism (1970-1973).

Abstract

This article deals with the interactions between social policies, work and gender during the Popular Unity (UP) government in Chile, 1970-1973. The objective is to understand how gender inequalities were treated in transition to socialism and, to what extend, they integrated UP government policies, especially in textile factories, a productive sector that played an important role in the period. Thus, we seek to understand how gender norms were stablished and/or persisted and how they were reproduced, confronted and tensioned in the period, in order to highlight aspects of the complex interactions between the state, sector of the working classes, the forms and mechanisms of domination and opression in capitalism and the processes based on the radical reconfiguration of capitalist sociability. During the period, the transformative impetus coexisted with a traditional and heteronormative morality that manifested itself in different ways, included within the eft and worker’s organizations, causing tensions, but also shifts in normative powers, unveilling the challenges involved in the transformation of opressive structures.