The Circulo de Lectura de Senoras [Ladies' Reading Circle] and the Club de Senoras [Ladies' Club] of Santiago, Chile: Middle- and Upper- Class Feminist Conversations, 1915-1920

This article shares two of the analytical premises underscoring much recent scholarship in what could be termed the developing field of "comparative feminisms." First, national feminist movements may best be understood within an international framework. Second, feminist movements, while by definition aimed at improving the conditions of women in society, at the same time represent classbased movements. The value of these postulates to the historian is that they allow her to move beyond the banner of "universal sisterhood" to explore the origins and development of a given feminist ideology or organization in all its complexity. This is what I hope to accomplish in the following discussion of the first two secular and autonomous associations of middle- and upper-class Chilean feminists established in Santiago, Chile: the Circulo de Lectura de Senoras and the Club de Senoras.