Domestic Service: Mobilization and Legislative Change under Chilean Military Rule

This paper will begin by addressing the systematic demobilization of civil society under authoritarian rule, examining through the lens of domestic service legislation how the military regime sought to reinstate social control over workers, women, and indigenous peoples.  This analysis places changing employer-servant relations in the context of the regime’s conservative agenda for women and family, as well as the labor market effects of increasing un- and underemployment in urban areas. Despite the generalized repression and specific barriers to domestic worker associations imposed by the military government after 1973, household worker activism intensified in the years prior to the new labor code of 1978, as these women lobbied military officials to recognize their basic rights as workers.  The regressive nature of the resulting 1978 titles on domestic service spurred domestic service leaders to join with feminist professionals and other women’s organizations to work openly against the military regime.  As the democratic transition drew near, domestic service associations intensified their public pressure on the regime, making more visible both women’s and workers’ rights in the late 1980s. Drawing on associational records, international funding reports, and media coverage, the paper will conclude with an analysis of how domestic workers’ activism and political alliances directly contributed to their legislative successes under the first democratic regime of 1990-1994.