Latin American Legal Studies

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of gender identity in the professional and political career of the female lawyer Mónica Madariaga Gutiérrez (1942-2009), who was legal counsel, secretary of state and ambassador of the Chilean Military Junta led by Augusto Pinochet, between 1973 and 1985. Through critical discourse analysis of her memoirs, interviews, and interventions in the Junta sessions, we argue that the key of her professional and political success in a military regime dominated by men was her gender performance of a subordinated masculinity, which simultaneously reproduced and challenged the patriarchal gender ideology of the military dictatorship. This study contributes to a re-reading of the political and legal history of Latin American authoritarian regimes through the lens of gender. Furthermore, it complicates the narratives regarding the access of women to the legal profession, revealing the paradoxical place occupied by conservative women who have reached positions of power in the juridical field.