Chile Forum

I would say the real power in Chile is with women. It is a matriarchal society, where mothers are the center of the family unity. I think they get a lot of that power because they are very good at keeping the male ego in tact ( very fragile at times in Chile ). In spite of the positions of women in Chile, they also like and perhaps demand to be treated as women.

The president for instance is constantly being made fun of because she is off flirting with other World leaders in the press. Women in offices, in a position of authority, are not below a little flirting to get what they want.

Is there lots of sexual discrimination in Chile? I am sure there is a lot of it, and it is often very obvious.

Personally as an employer, I am far more inclined to hire women over men. Nothing personal guys, but I am just not impressed with the work ethic among the Chilean men that I have hired or worked with in Chile relative to the Women I have worked with in Chile. Women get the job done in Chile. Men tend to drink coffee and sit around and talk a lot. I believe women in Chile tend to be more serious about their carriers and accomplishing something. Men tend to take some sort of entitlement view of a job, where women tend to take the view of a job as an opportunity.

Overall the president has been far from a superstar. In fact I might go so far as to say she is the most overpriced hooker in the country. Selling out the countries future to any corporate executive with a few pesos, to keep rioters out of the streets of Santiago. Natural resources gone, environment gone, tourism projects cut, hospitals overloaded, education funding gone, etc, etc. As long as Los Condes and Vina still look nice, that is more or less where Chile ends for her. She is neither a socialist nor a president. On the other hand some of those same qualities go far in international diplomatic circles.

I still see women as being very much in power positions in this country, even if the guys name is hanging on the door. It is that very work ethic of men, that puts women in the drivers seat to make real decisions, even if they are not "designated" the leader.

Social / economic class has a lot to do with it, but even there overall compared to most latin american countries I see women in far more power positions. When we need to solve a problem for a client and we open our little black book of contacts, I would say about 60-80% are women at the top of our list to make things happen. Many of them are on the lower end of the eduction, pay scale, lower social economic positions, and so on. Among them are the secretaries, assistants, desk clerks. Yea, the boss might be a man, but he is many times the the very problem we want to solve. For example the boss is refusing to sign a document, authorize something, or just do his job in general. It is our contacts with the secretaries, assistant managers, and so on that helps us get around the bureaucracy. Those positions are where the real power is at, where things really get done in an office, and they tend to be filled by women in Chile.

On the upper end of the scale are our contacts with judges, notaries, registries, senior partners in other law firms, various owners of business we work with. A good percentage of that class of power people and professionals we have come to count on are women. They are far from being just under paid secretaries. Most are far better educated than the men in Chile in an equivalent position, have international experience, and many own their own shops (e.g. female notaries, or heads of law firms, hotel owners, and so on).

I have to admit however, we are totally not against playing on that male ego by sending in a pretty paralegal or attorney to convince some government bureaucrat to get moving on whatever. To be fair however, we have also done the same thing in sending in a good looking young attorney to handle an office full of women. That is the culture. It simply a fact of the society that has to be dealt with, and more than anything else our clients pay us to solve cultural issues they can't or don't have the time to solve.

I was going to stay away from unpacking that term. Can't resist. The term "cultural relativism" is none sense. Most people use it in the sense of the exact opposite of that it means, but even used correctly it is kind of meaningless. All culture is relative. Culture is nothing more than a set of norms and standards, outside of the context the object being compared means nothing. At the most fundamental level underwriting culture in the macro sense that we throw around the term are language norms. Language tends to act as the ultimate barrier between cultures, and thus exchange of what is considered right or wrong, correct or mistaken, and so on. The fundamental assumption here is that communication is required for culture to exist. There are no cultures of one. Well, that is sufficient unpacking my general definition of culture, to get on to the next point. There is a lot more to it.

Now that said, I think people underestimate just how large their culture is and how much culture overlaps, this is especially true now that communication barriers are coming down so fast by technology. I mean the fact that women have made so much progress in Chile, is that something only from Chilean culture? No, that was acquired and exchanged with other cultures. Not all of the norms of say the United States or Europe where out right accepted or adopted in to Chilean culture, but fundamentally we can say that Chile is very much a western culture in its general perceptions about womens roles and such. Even the guy that is a discriminating pig is likely aware of the fact that he is being one and just does not care. He is aware of the moral implications of what he is doing. Of course we are setting aside the complete old school Neanderthals here. But for the most part it is in the culture.

The issue as I see it in Chile is that the culture has made an active choice to maintain those roles in many cases. That should be respected. Women have sufficient power in this society overall to change those sorts of things collectively, but have chosen not to. That is to be respected. In many areas they are choosing to change them, and that should also be respected. Don't mistake agreed upon traditions of behavior between men and women, with discrimination. The issue is could they have done otherwise? Are men, and only men to blame, and is there even something blame worthy at stake. Most countries in Europe and the United States are just loaded with examples of these roles. So, it would be a complete double standard to not extend to Chilean men and women also the right to determine their own cultural norms and behaviors of relationships.

Hypothetical example, a women wants to advance in an office in Chile. She engages is flirting to get that position with her male bosses.

A) it would never occur to the women that she is some how less for doing it.
B) There where other methods for her to get that position (e.g. hard work, time, other offices). This just happened to be the quickest and most effective.

Is that some how blame worthy, and who do we blame in such a situation? The boss, the society, the women? No, it is mutual consent. A norm. Yes, there are plenty of cases where there really is some one to blame, in every society. My contention is that in Chile however it is engaged in by mutual consent for the most part, what American or European perceptions would consider sexiest or discriminatory. Right down to women soliciting cat calls and whistles to affirm they are attractive.

The first thing I had drilled in to me by a women family member and female friends when I first moved to Chile is that a man should open a women's door and so on and so forth. The thought of opening a door for women, because she was a women, would never have entered my mind in the States, and I would have checked with my attorney first and had her sign a waver in triplicate before doing it. But this Chilean family member would stand at a door and refuse to move until I opened it for her. I can sight a thousand instances of women in Chile insisting on such things, not as a some sort of polite thing but as a right. Now, who is using who? Who is to blame, when it is women enforcing the norm in the culture?

I will not even get in to the scandal if I did not bring my wife her coffee in the morning. She claims it is her right as a women and a wife to have coffee in bed. There are million things in our relationship that she insist is the man's job, duty, and so on. I don't in anyway think she is incapable of doing them, but she insist on enforcing those Chilean cultural norms. They are very much Chilean.

your kidding me right?