Conclusions

Abstract

This study has emphasised the importance of differentiating historical experience by social location of the actor. Failure to do so not only entails costs for the analyst in the form of a partial and distorted account of the exile experience, it also entails costs for the actors themselves. Whilst studies of exile have generally differentiated exiles by class, few have paid any attention to gender.¹ The neglect of a gender dimension means that the differential costs of exile for men and women remain hidden or are only publicly recognised after a good deal of pain and suffering has been endured. It was not until the upheavals in the home reached ‘crisis’ proportions that the absence of a gender perspective began to be noted. In their introduction to the second seminar on mental health and exile held in May 1981, the World University Service note the absence of a gender dimension amongst the (mainly Chilean) contributors and call for further reflection and separate studies on the situation of women ‘whose problems of adaptation to exile and return seem particularly acute’.² Silva-Labarca’s study of Chilean women exiles in France and Belgium — of which more later — is one example of the growing interest in a gender analysis amongst Chilean women in exile.³