To protect and serve being a woman: the incorporation of female police officers into Carabineros de Chile (1962-2005).
Dr Azun Candina-Polomer, Associate Professor at the Centre of Latin American Cultural Studies and the Historical Sciences Department, University of Chile
Notes & Changes
Event Co-Organised with the Police and Policing Research discussion group
The event may be recorded, in which case your face and/or voice may appear in the footage. This footage might be used on public social media. If you prefer not to be recorded, please sit outside the recording area and wait for the recording to be turned off before asking questions.
Abstract
Why were women incorporated into Carabineros de Chile, and what was expected of them? How this incorporation and its evolution was a part of political and institutional changes in recent history? In this exposition, I review the reasons that the institution had for adding women to its ranks, an analyse the thresholds that they crossed, in legal terms, to fulfil the functions assigned to them. In this sense, the weight of Latin American marianismo (the understanding of women as natural caregivers of children and other women), and the political and social turn towards a gender perspective policing, are examined here as a contribution to understanding how Latin American police institutions designed their roles and public image in the second half of the twentieth century.
BIO
Dr. Candina is an Associate Professor at the Centre of Latin American Cultural Studies and the Historical Sciences Department, University of Chile. Over the years, her research has focused mainly in the democratic processes in Chile and the Southern Cone involving police forces, social memory of the authoritarian regimes in Chile and Argentina and women history in Latin America.
In the past two years, she has been a co researcher at the project Gender, policing and urban margins: exploring the practices and social interactions of female police officers in Chile, supported by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) of Chile, addressing the complex relationship between institutional policies, gender perspectives and violence in vulnerable neighborhoods.