Julieta Kirkwood, feminism and Latin American socialism

On Monday, April 6, CLACSO and the Diploma in Latin American Critical Thought from the University of Chile They remembered Julieta KirkwoodOn the day of her birth, highlighting her legacy through the voices of Latin American feminists.

Participated: Dora Barrancos (Argentina), Montserrat Sagot (Costa Rica) and Daniela Osorio (Chile)
Moderated: Elisa Franco (Chile)

Julieta Kirkwood Bañados (1936–1985) established herself as a key figure in the rearticulation of Chilean feminism during the 1970s and 1980s, systematically linking academic reflection with political action. Educated at the University of Chile and influenced by the social and political mobilizations of her time, her thought gained greater depth in the context of the military dictatorship, where repression and censorship revealed the limitations of an exclusionary democracy. From this perspective, Kirkwood formulated a central thesis that permeated her work and activism: the impossibility of a true democracy without the active participation of women, summarized in her well-known statement, “There is no democracy without feminism.” Her intellectual production —expressed in works such as Being Political in Chile, Weaving Rebellions and Feminarios— not only contributed to providing a critical language to Latin American feminism, but also proposed analytical categories such as the “knots” of power and the places of enunciation, which made it possible to question hierarchical structures in both the political and cultural spheres.