“The Moral Superiority of the Woman”: about the Racialized Standard of Feminity in Chile

Abstract

This article problematizes the historical conditions of emergence of the «discourse of moral superiority of women», rhetoric of legitimate femininity in Chile under which there would be a set of «properly feminine» qualities that are here to humanize, renovate and clean the public space and politics. I will argue that the main sociohistorical configurations in which this discourse emerges, correspond to the proliferation of public debates around gender, race and the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In the first section of the article I will present the nationalist configuration in which sex-racialized imagery of «national family» would emerge. In the second section, I will discuss some of the discursive practices of othering who answer the call of the civilizing mission, including the racialized figure of «the popular mother» that takes the central place to understand the emergence of the discourse of «the moral superiority of the woman» in Chile at the time. Finally, I will suggest some conclusions proposing a look of bewilderment and denaturation in relation to «the unmarked normal» of the category «woman» in Chile.