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The Paradox of Paternalism: Women and the Politics of Authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic. By Elizabeth Manley. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017. Pp. 319. $89.95 cloth.
How can it be that dictatorships could lead to democratic openness and gender equity? This is the central question that Manley explores, positing that dictators Trujillo (1930-61) and Balaguer (1966-78) bolstered patriarchal values entrenched in Dominican society, all the while opening venues for conscious or unconsciously subversive female roles.
During these regimes, upper- and middle-class Dominican women engaged with the state as credible and legitimate political actors, continuing a late nineteenth-century liberal trajectory for education reform that was augmented during the years of the first US military occupation (1916-24). Female political personas were grounded in a moralizing and maternalist discourse, highlighting women's civic duties as mediators for peace and guardians of national integrity. Both dictators appropriated the patriotic feminist discourse to suit their local populist and international propaganda needs. However, Manley asks that the historical record acknowledge women's activities, whether in support of or in opposition to these regimes, as significant contributions that defined the limits of authoritarian rule and the possibilities for democratic inclusion.
In the first chapter, the author traces the early twentieth-century Dominican feminist movement that gave priority to increased access...