This is a well-researched, well-written, and conceptually precise contribution to a thick field of books on the topic of women and politics in Chile. Susan Franceschet frames her book as an analysis of gendered citizenship in Chile from the 1930s to the present. In the individual chapters, she employs concepts and theories drawn from literature on social movements and women and the state. Specifically, she addresses four main areas of debate in the field of women and politics: the employment of a “politics of difference” as a movement frame, the tensions between “autonomous” or “double militant” activist positions, the factors that impede or facilitate women's access to electoral politics, and relations between women and women's state machineries.

Chapters 3 and 4 rely on secondary materials to analyze the strategies and political context of the first-wave Chilean women's movement, the women's movement under the Pinochet dictatorship, and the role of women in Chile's democratic transition. Franceschet's historical comparison of Chilean women's movements allows her to address the first two debates: the politics-of-difference strategy and autonomy versus double militancy. She argues that the use of a maternalist discourse of difference as a collective action frame by first-wave feminists set the stage for subsequent feminist movements also to employ this frame—although later movements succeeded in changing the meaning of motherhood over time, from an apolitical to a political concept. Thus, she argues, a maternal frame is not inherently conservative. The historical review also allows the author to trace the tensions between the feminist positions of autonomy (maintaining political distance from the state) and double militancy (being simultaneously a movement member and working with the state) back to the first-wave feminist movement. The tension between the autonomous and double-militant positions, argues Franceschet, has been ongoing and is one that particularly divides the contemporary movement.

The second two debates, on women and electoral politics and women and states, are addressed directly in Chapters 5 and 6. In these chapters, the author situates the Chilean case in the major women and politics literature to explain, for example, the institutional and cultural barriers to women's entry into electoral politics and why Chile, unlike many of its Latin American neighbors, does not have a quotas law and why it likely will not have one in the near or distant future. She also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of SERNAM, Chile's National Women's Service, in the context of the broader literature on women and the state.

For experts on Chile or women and politics in Latin America, this book will mainly serve as a thorough and knowledgeable overview. The historical chapters do not add new information, nor does the book make a novel theoretical contribution. Portions, however, will be of interest to the expert audience, specifically Franceschet's detailed account of the relations between the Chilean women's movement and SERNAM (Chapters 6 and 7) and her discussion of relations between working-class women in popular women's organizations and middle-class professionals in feminist nongovernmental organizations (Chapter 7). Chapter 7 also provides an up-to-date discussion of the state of the women's movement in contemporary, post-transition Chile. Both of these chapters are based on primary interview material, and add detail and insights that cannot be obtained elsewhere (except from the author's prior publications upon which some of these chapters are based).

In terms of its contribution to the field of women and politics, the book is largely theory confirming. It confirms, for example, prior findings on the variables necessary for effective women's policy machineries, and confirms that there is a place for both autonomous and double-militant feminist activists, depending on the time and place. Although theory confirmation is important, this reviewer would have liked Franceschet to take a stronger position on how and why the Chilean case contributes to theoretical debates in women and politics. Along the same vein, social movement theories could have been used more rigorously to explain the cycling-down of feminist activism in Chile during the post-transition period.

In summary, Franceschet's book provides a thorough overview of both contemporary and historical issues in women and politics in Chile and squarely addresses a number of major debates in the field of women and politics. Because it highlights these debates within an accessibly written and thorough case study, the book would be an excellent selection for undergraduate courses in this field.