Download file 83 KB Texto completo en español Download file 85 KB Complete text in english More of: Sonia Montecino

In this paper, Sonia Montecino explores the relation between men and women in the evangelical universe of the borough of La Pintana (in Santiago, Chile), drawing attention to significant cultural changes occurring in the definitions and conducts associated with femininity and masculinity. The author states that the masculine world is abandoning signs seen by popular culture as essential to the construction of virility, namely football, alcohol and violence. A similar thing is happening with women, who are broadening their horizons by adding to their maternal role, as constituent symbols of femininity, the membership of a community and the dignity of their status. Nonetheless, these changes do not necessarily mean less unequal gender relations, since the emergence of neo-machismo often enables men to wield arbitrary power. On the other side, women can use the rhetoric of equality, based on biblical interpretation, to counteract male domination. Thus evangelical men and women, permeated by the "world" through communications media, adapt their relations to models without reference in their past lives, in a complex and tense "journey" that is bound to vary from generation to generation.