Out of the Shadows

Since the early 1970s women across South America have been uniting to confont the brutality and repression of military rule. In Out of the Shadows, author Jo Fisher interviews women in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay to show how they have moved into the vacuum left by the military's destruction of the male-dominated left. Chapters describe how women have organised - in communal kitchens in Chile's shantytowns, as trade unionists in Uruguay, peace activists in Paraguay, mothers of the disappeared and self-help groups in Argentina, as grassroots feminists in Chile - ending the isolation of home life. While built around the traditional female concerns such as providing food and care for their families, the new women's movements have developed a grassroots feminism that is strikingly different from the middle class feminism of the city centres and have had a seismic impact on gender consciousness throughout the region.