Gender, ethnicity, class, and the breadth of suffrage in Chile and Peru

Perspectives among suffragists

Abstract

Who gets included and when are longstanding issues in the study of historical democratization. Latin America —as did the advanced industrialized world— followed a mostly piecemeal process of formal inclusion, extending suffrage to specific
groups through different episodes of reform. This form of inclusion followed political logics of how new voters might alter officeholding patterns and the balance of power among existing political parties, minimizing degrees of uncertainty. At the same time, this approach to treating specific groups separately reflects how social categories were constructed and politicized. This article focuses on this later component analyzing how women suffragists in Chile and Peru viewed their inclusion and that of other groups along gender, class, and ethnic lines. The persistence of a literacy restriction to suffrage that had a  disproportioned impact on indigenous women is the main vehicle to analyze how these exclusions were viewed. The analysis shows that most first wave feminists emphasized the need for a degree of education for citizenship, accepting the literacy requirement. In terms of ethnicity, the myth of an ethnically homogenous nation in Chile prevented linking the literacy requirement with the exclusion of indigenous people. In Peru, that link was clear, and some voices questioned the exclusion of indigenous peoples. Overall, the article shows the importance of dominant discourses and domestic contextual factors in suffragists’ understanding of the relationship between the inclusion/exclusion of different groups.