Counter Strategies of resistance of women in Maule, Chile, in the face of the social and health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction and Objectives. The purpose of the text is to discuss what we have called counter strategies of resistance to the health and social crisis of COVID-19 employed by women of different social positions, professions, ages and nationalities residing in the Maule region, Chile. The objectives are oriented to identify aspects of women's lives that have been impacted by the pandemic; describe the practices that they have implemented to resist its impacts; and verify the needs and challenges that this social and health crisis posed for each one, stressing the use of individual practices - occasional tactics - in their articulation as counter strategies of resistance in the health emergency. Methodology. The methodology consisted in the application of 16 online interviews to women from different communes of Maule, which were analyzed considering the contributions of the individual-subject-actor perspective (Bajoit, 2008) and the intersectional approach (Crenshaw, 1991), to address the concepts of strategy and tactics of everyday life (De Certeau, 2000). Results. The pandemic impacted intrafamily relationships, work and health. The lessons learned refer to individual tactics, as well as the learning of digital technologies, and the occasions of contact with nature, construction or maintenance of routines and use of traditional medicines. This allows us to speak of a willpower to generate strategies from below, not led by a structural power, which - rejecting the imposition of an individual and depoliticized response to the pandemic situation - transforms the uncertainties of the moment of emergency into a place of its own. Conclusions. Despite individualistic policies, women living in Maule managed to cope with the effects of the pandemic through actions that, starting from the individual, are transformed into collective actions from the family, the neighborhood and the feminist articulation.