Women: between the public and the private space. Historiographic advances in the local and the political

Abstract

This research aims to discuss about some problems that persist in our national historiography, mainly the omission and/or distortion of events and/or social groups when they do not adjusted to the current interpretive focus on national history, process and the explaining mechanics of cause and effect. With the purpose to fomulate some proposals whe present the results of a preliminary study focus in the beneficence activities made in the early 1920's by a group of elite women known as the Sociedad de Socorros de Señoras (Ladies' Aid Society), from Osorno city, southern Chile. Also whe try to prove two things: an early intervention for these women in the public space, long before the attainment of formal political rights and the concern of the elite for some problems of modernity, a point denied by historical interpretations like those mentioned.