Guest Blogger and Associate Researcher at the University of Bern, Andreas Stucki explores the intersection of gender, power, and rural education in 1960s Chile, uncovering how development initiatives both empowered and constrained women within traditional social hierarchies.
This 1960s photograph of young Chilean women working with textiles suggests professionalism and progress. Yet a closer look uncovers the constraints of patriarchal structures and traditional gender norms deeply embedded in international rural development practices.
Rural Education as Development?
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic development agency Misereor partnered with Chile’s faith-based Instituto de Educación Rural (IER, Institute for Rural Education) to deliver rural education programs nationwide[DP1] . These initiatives were co-funded by international organizations such as Misereor and the World Food Program (WFP, then part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Rural social engineering aimed to improve the lives of populations in the countryside by enhancing education and economic opportunities.
On the surface, the collaboration between Misereor and the IER appears innovative. Misereor’s reports frequently lauded the pedagogical strengths of the IER’s work, particularly its reach across communities throughout the country. IER programs provided practical training in farming, nutrition, and household management, intending to modernize and transform rural livelihoods. Yet the records also reveal significant limitations.
Misereor staff, based in Germany, privately acknowledged that the IER’s approach to rural development was infused with paternalistic and hierarchical attitudes. Confronting these problematic aspects openly was deemed impractical, given Chile’s socio-political context and the reliance on the IER as a trusted partner. As a result, the programs were rarely challenged by national or international organizations for reinforcing conservative notions of family and gender roles under the guise of development.
Gendered Education: Reinforcing Stereotypes?
Gender roles shaped by Catholic ideals strongly influenced the IER’s rural education programs. While young women were taught domestic skills such as sewing, childcare, and cooking, their male counterparts received training in agriculture and technical expertise. These divisions reinforced existing gender stereotypes, confining young women to the domestic sphere while positioning young men as central to the productive rural economy.
One notable exception was an agricultural women’s school near Lanco, a small town in southern Chile. Led by the Franciscan Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, the school received significant funding from Misereor in themid-1960s. Unlike other programs, it offered a dual curriculum: domestic education alongside practical training in agriculture, animal husbandry, and land use. This came close to Catholic female empowerment.
Indeed, the school’s ambitions extended beyond preparing women for household responsibilities. By equipping them with agricultural skills, it sought to enable young women to manage family farms or take up supervisory roles in larger agricultural enterprises. However, the program’s exclusivity for daughters of landowners significantly curtailed its transformative potential, excluding daughters of agricultural labourers.
Education as a Tool for Control
Misereor’s internal evaluations of gendered rural development highlight another critical issue: women’s education was often framed as a tool to prevent urban migration. Development experts feared that rural women moving to cities would disrupt traditional family structures and face moral risks. Consequently, education initiatives were designed to “anchor” women to their local and regional communities.
This approach limited the scope of programs in rural education. Women were taught just enough to contribute locally but often not enough that they could disrupt patriarchal norms or aspire to roles beyond those prescribed by Catholic family models. Reports celebrated the idea that graduates would remain in their villages and use their skills to uplift others while adhering to Catholic expectations.
Despite these constraints, some women defied expectations, pursuing further education and occasionally returning to their communities as advisors or educators. Others even secured leadership roles in national rural development initiatives. These outliers demonstrate the programs’ potential to foster empowerment, even though their impact was often limited by structural inequalities.
Rethinking the History of Rural Development
The legacy of Misereor co-funded development programs in rural Chile is a mixed one. While these initiatives expanded educational opportunities and improved livelihoods, they also reinforced existing gender and social hierarchies. This reflects broader tensions in development: the push to “modernize” and “nationalize” the countryside often coexisted uneasily with efforts to preserve traditional social values. Similarly, international funding bodies like the WFP and the International Labor Organization, which spearheaded the so-called Andean Program in the region, failed to challenge—and often reinforced—the gendered inequalities inherent in faith-based rural development.
Despite their significance, gendered practices in rural education and their role in perpetuating social and political control have received little attention in writing the history of rural development. Historians must critically examine the cultural biases embedded in development strategies, which often perpetuate inequalities instead of addressing them.
By revisiting these histories, we can better understand the pitfalls and potential of development efforts, both past and present. As we reflect on these histories, development practitioners must confront a critical question: how can interventions dismantle harmful stereotypes while respecting local contexts and supporting the agency and decisions of rural women as key drivers of change?
Read the full paper here: Stucki A. ‘Co-ordinated Under one Machine’: International and faith-based rural development, 1950s–1980s. Rural History. Published online 2025:1-19.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Featured image credit: Misereor Archive (Aachen, Germany), 236-001-0006
