DISCOURSES OF WELL-BEING OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS LIVING IN PATAGONIA, CHILE By Maria Isidora Bilbao Nieva A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Psychology–Doctor of Philosophy 2022 ABSTRACT DISCOURSES OF WELL-BEING OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS LIVING IN PATAGONIA, CHILE By Maria Isidora Bilbao Nieva The term well-being entails material and subjective elements, and it is critical to promote it during adolescence. Access to opportunities and resources are key determinants to well-being, but not all adolescents have the same living conditions. In the specific case of adolescent girls living in Latin American countries, structural barriers to well-being are derived from gender and cultural factors that influence their everyday experiences. From a Community Psychology perspective, structural factors are critical to well-being promotion and should be considered alongside individual- level factors. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, this study examined the discourses of well-being of ten adolescent girls from low-income families living in Coyhaique. The analysis was focused on how girls talk about what contributes to their well-being, with a specific focus on structural conditions that affect them. The results showed that while they spoke of individual-level factors contributing to their well-being, they also mentioned structural issues influenced by gender and culture. Those structural level factors were related to resources, support networks, and community environment. Implications for well-being promotion are discussed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my committee, in particular to my extraordinary advisor, Dr. Cris Sullivan, for giving me the exact type of support I needed to do this dissertation. Her invaluable insight and her guidance made this project possible. I also thank her for her patience, compassion, and generosity to my family and to me during this process. I also want to thank Becas Chile and to Fulbright Chile for giving me the chance to do this program. And to the many people at MSU who went above and beyond to help me: Nicole Namy from the Office of International Students, Brooke Rosek from the Psychology Department, and Emily Holley from the Center of Latin American Studies. I simply could not do it without them. I thank the members of the Eco-Community program and my wonderful cohort. They encouraged me and made my work better. Special thanks to my dear friends MK, Funmi, and Jen, who made me feel safe and appreciated. To Katie and Jason, who included and welcomed us from the very first day in the U.S. And to Dani, who was always willing to share her knowledge and experience with me. I am forever grateful for their generosity, kindness, and honest friendship. I would also like to thank my Chilean network, which made this study possible. To Dr. Jaime Alfaro, his guidance, generosity, and friendship opened many doors for me. To my chosen family in Coyhaique, and in particular, to Maca, who patiently and kindly heard about this dissertation over and over again. And to her beautiful family, Ricardo, Elena, Juana, and Clara, who received me at their home with all generosity. Many thanks go to my dear friends Ale Meyer and Mery, who accompanied me during this process, laughed with me, and cheered me up when I felt overwhelmed. Finally, I would like to thank my parents and brothers for their unconditional support, my son Iñaki for his love and patience with me, and my husband Ignacio for his exceptional loyalty and kindness. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................................ 3 The importance of well-being ...................................................................................................................... 3 An intersectional approach to well-being................................................................................................... 4 Factors leading to well-being ....................................................................................................................... 6 Well-being of adolescent girls ...................................................................................................................... 7 Study background ........................................................................................................................................ 10 STUDY JUSTIFICATION ............................................................................................................................ 13 METHOD ......................................................................................................................................................... 14 Epistemological Approach ......................................................................................................................... 14 Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA)......................................................................................... 16 Data source ................................................................................................................................................... 17 Data preparation .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Transcription ............................................................................................................................................... 19 Translation .................................................................................................................................................. 20 Analytical approach ..................................................................................................................................... 20 Ethics ............................................................................................................................................................. 24 Researcher’s position and role ................................................................................................................... 25 Qualitative rigor and trustworthiness ....................................................................................................... 28 RESULTS .......................................................................................................................................................... 31 How participants defined well-being ........................................................................................................ 31 Individual-level factors identified by participants as leading to well-being ........................................ 32 Optimism..................................................................................................................................................... 32 Resilience and strength .................................................................................................................................. 35 Extraversion ................................................................................................................................................ 37 Individualism and determination. ................................................................................................................. 39 Structural factors identified by participants as leading to well-being................................................... 42 Access to resources, opportunities, and material stability ................................................................................ 42 Educational opportunities ........................................................................................................................ 43 Material stability ..................................................................................................................................... 48 Direct support networks ............................................................................................................................... 51 Family support ........................................................................................................................................ 51 Peers’ support .......................................................................................................................................... 59 Institutional responses................................................................................................................................... 64 Safe community environment ......................................................................................................................... 70 Summary of findings ................................................................................................................................... 75 iv DISCUSSION .................................................................................................................................................. 77 Structural level factors ................................................................................................................................. 79 Study limitations ........................................................................................................................................... 85 Implications for research, practice, and policy. ....................................................................................... 87 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................................. 90 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................................. 91 APPENDIX A: Interview Protocol.......................................................................................................... 92 APPENDIX B: Analytical memos ............................................................................................................ 94 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................................. 166 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Summary of Data .............................................................................................................................. 18 Table 2: Example of Stanza Organization .................................................................................................... 19 Table 3: Codebook for Deductive Coding ................................................................................................... 21 Table 4: Adaptation of Mullet's guidelines for Qualitative Rigor in CDA (Mullet 2018, P.121) ......... 29 vi INTRODUCTION The term well-being is referred in the literature as an umbrella concept that entails material and subjective elements (Gough & McGregor, 2007). Promoting well-being during adolescence is considered a key investment for present and future life (Patton et al., 2016). Adequate access to opportunities and living conditions during adolescence are fundamental for well-being promotion, and in the case of girls, structural issues -e.g., early or late marriage, participation in education, low exposure to economic and social adversity- become critical for the development of capabilities and health resources (Patton et al., 2016). Not all adolescents enjoy structural conditions that promote well-being. For adolescent girls living in Latin America, structural conditions often represent barriers to their well-being, since they face a myriad of forms of gender-based violence and discrimination (UNICEF et al., 2020). While there is substantial evidence of the barriers faced by Latin American adolescent girls, there is very little information of how those are experienced in terms of well-being. To understand and address those structural conditions from girls’ standpoint becomes a strategic step for well-being promotion among this group. In the same vein, the enhancement of well-being, particularly within the most disadvantaged groups of society, is a declared ambition of Community Psychology (Fryer & Laing, 2008; García- Ramírez et al., 2014). While traditionally, psychology’s understanding of well-being has centered predominantly on individuals' internal psychological resources and perceptions (Diener et al., 2017), community psychologists have stressed the importance of contextual factors and its influence on people’s lives (Evans, 2014; Evans & Prilleltensky, 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky, 2006), recognizing that individuals are not isolated from their structural conditions. Thus, community psychology pays attention to the relationship that individuals build with their social and material environment, and how those become relevant for their well-being. In addition, critical community 1 psychologists in particular have proposed that, instead of changing people’s behavior and cognitive styles, to promote well-being it is necessary to conduct changes focused on the systemic levels, fostering social justice for all groups, particularly those that have been historically marginalized (Evans, 2014). Depending on the context in which people live, the structural forces that affect well-being, as well as the struggles and barriers hampering it, take different shapes and affect communities in different ways. As there is more research about the living conditions and how they are experienced by communities in Europe and North America, researchers from the global south have advocated for examining the communities in the south, avoiding the transportation of western ideas of well- being to the rest of the globe (Mahali et al., 2018). In addition, western-normative understandings of well-being would also include some forms of adolescence (and girlhood) and exclude others (Hunner-Kreisel et al., 2021). Those girls whose modes of life do not fit in with the western assumptions of how adolescents should live can become otherized, and their understandings of well-being unintelligible for researchers. This would impede researchers’ ability to identify and understand key structural conditions that need to be changed to promote girls’ well-being. In short, examining the experiences of girls from the global south expands the diversity of studies in the field, offering new perspectives of which and how girls’ living conditions are affecting well-being. 2 LITERATURE REVIEW The importance of well-being Well-being has been defined in multiple ways depending on the disciplinary and theoretical tradition adopted. Within Psychology, well-being is often considered an individual phenomenon, based on clinical conceptualizations –i.e., psychological well-being (Ryff, 1995) and subjective well- being (Diener et al., 2017)– that understand it as the result of experiencing positive affect. In addition, well-being has been measured using scales that emphasize positive affect, the absence of depressive symptomatology, and being satisfied with one’s own life (White & Blackmore, 2015). From this standpoint, well-being is viewed as a psychological strength, highly relevant to adolescents and their development. The policies designed to increase well-being among adolescents are considered to bring benefits that supersede the current generation, improving individual health and positive collective relationships, shaping nourishing environments during adolescence and also to the adult years to come (Patton et al., 2016). In addition, a number of specific risks to which adolescents are more exposed –e.g., interpersonal violence, injuries, substance abuse, etc.– make this a critical stage to promote health and well-being, and have become an international priority for development agencies across the world (Salam et al., 2016). Qualitative research has demonstrated that the experiences of subjective well-being are based on heterogeneous interpretations of the contexts in which people live (Fattore et al., 2021). In other words, how people evaluate their lives and experience positive or negative affect is dependent upon their interpretation of their living context. Thus, creating strategies to promote well-being requires a deep understanding of people’s context and the way they experience and interpret it. The study of these conditions and interpretations is a necessary step for designing efforts to improve adolescent well-being (Patton et al., 2016). In that line, adolescent girls face particular challenges that affect their well-being, including but not limited to child marriage, sexual rights, 3 access to education, and the myriad of consequences related to gender inequality (Patton et al., 2016). Exploring girls’ opinions on how these and other barriers affect their experiences is not only critical for designing effective strategies for well-being promotion, but also honors their voices and opinions, and makes them active participants in discussions that directly affect them. An intersectional approach to well-being Intersectionality theory conjoins a number of political and analytical approaches developed in the U.S. by Black Feminism, aiming to articulate how different axes of power are intertwined and generate structures of social inequality and particular experiences in different social groups (Collins & Bilge, 2016). The theory originated as a response to the first feminist wave in the U.S., whose tenets were largely based on the experiences of white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class women and excluded other experiences (McCann & Kim, 2017). Intersectionality theory rejects the attempt to make one “female” experience universal, recognizing the undeniable role played by race and other factors in how women and girls perceive and are perceived by others (Wilson, 2013). Intersectional theory highlights that human experience is situated in a complex matrix of power and class relationships (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Therefore, intersectional analysis is not a simple addition of marginalized identities but is rather a complex understanding of culture and structure that have produced unjust patterns of resources and opportunities’ distribution (Collins & Bilge, 2016; May, 2015). In that sense, an intersectional focus to understand human experience should not be centered on one particular axis of social division but on how such axes are co- constitutive and co-produce each other (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Following Buchanan & Wiklund (2021), an intersectional approach to well-being should consider at least the three core tenets of intersectional theory: (1) the mutually constitutive nature of the structures of oppression, (2) the interrelation between those structures create a structural matrix that affects experiences and influences the conceptualizations of social identities, and (3) 4 intersectional approaches should aim for social justice, and theory and praxis should work conjointly for that, influencing all stages of a process (Buchanan & Wiklund, 2021, p. 26). In that sense, an intersectional approach to well-being should be focused on how different oppressive structures are reproducing and substantiating each other, acting as systemic barriers to well-being that affect some groups and not others. These structures determine oppression but also privilege. Studying what leads to well-being sheds light on how structures of opportunities and exclusions are distributed unequally among different populations. In other words, an intersectional approach reveals that not all people have the same levels of “access” to well-being. Using intersectionality theory to inform analysis allows us to understand how those structures of opportunity are built through different axes that substantiate each other. Thus, one cannot understand how sexism acts as a barrier to women’s well-being without understanding how it is sustained by other isms, like racism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism. As mentioned before, in psychology, well-being is understood as both experiences of positive affect and a positive evaluation of one’s life. The differences between individuals in terms of well-being are usually seen as a result of individual characteristics. An intersectional approach would remind us that it is undeniable that certain social groups have been historically marginalized, facing disadvantages, social hostility, and stress in constant and systematic ways. These repetitive experiences have detrimental impacts on health and well-being (Buchanan & Wiklund, 2020), and therefore, they shape how certain groups experience less positive affect and have a lower level of life satisfaction. Intersectionality theory is an approach that allows us to recognize that these lower levels of well-being are a result of patterns of systemic injustices and not of individual characteristics. Thus, instead of focusing on the differences between levels of subjective well-being between individuals of different genders, races, ages, etc., an intersectional approach tries to understand how institutionalized forms of exclusion and oppression are producing such differences, as well as to 5 examine how they give shape to affective and cognitive experiences. In addition, it must be recognized that the subjective definitions of what constitutes a good life are also a result of the position each one of us occupies in the social structure, which means that well-being is also a dynamic concept that results from one’s position within the larger societal structure. Factors leading to well-being The promotion of well-being has been an important priority for psychologists, particularly for those working in the positive psychology field, who have been leading the discussions regarding how well-being can be fostered, as well as how to avoid symptoms of anxiety and depression (Ahmed, 2010). Mainly promoted by Martin Seligman, among others (Cabanas & Illouz, 2019), positive psychology gained popularity for its salutogenic approach and orientation to promotion, overcoming the mainstream psychological tendency to be focused on pathologies (Di Martino et al., 2018; White, 2010). As many researchers have described, positive psychology received important support from public and private entities to locate well-being promotion at the center of the international public policy debate (Ahmed, 2010; Cabanas & Illouz, 2019; White, 2017). The same authors have stressed that the knowledge produced by positive psychology has reached a very wide audience, reaching social spaces outside academia. The research on well-being conducted from this perspective has proposed that certain individual attributions and characteristics help people achieve well-being (Ahmed, 2010; Ganesh & McAllum, 2010). Thus, psychology assumes the task of identifying and promoting psychological strengths and resources that people can develop to face problems and pathologies (Proctor et al., 2009). Specifically, to promote well-being, many psychological interventions are oriented to changing individuals’ attitudes and behaviors toward independence, autonomy, self-regulation, activity, and productivity (Gough, 2017). 6 In addition, because individual characteristics are seen as helping people achieve greater well- being, they become ideals for how people should be and behave. For example, calmness, empathy, and responsibility are proposed by positive psychologists as being connected with higher well-being (Ganesh & McAllum, 2010), and extraversion and social self-efficacy have been suggested as positively correlated with life satisfaction (Proctor et al., 2009). Other scholars from the same field propose attitudes such as being responsible, nurturing others, altruism, civility, and tolerance to achieve well-being and help others achieve it (McDonald & O’Callaghan, 2008). While it is important to consider individual variables that promote well-being, a community psychology perspective would also consider that other types of changes – beyond the individual – need to be made to promote well-being. An exclusive focus on individual skills, like coping mechanisms and social behaviors, leads to minimizing the consideration of structural conditions that may influence people’s ability to achieve well-being. A study developed by UNICEF of interventions on adolescents’ well-being from low and middle-income countries shows that the vast majority are focused on the individual and interpersonal levels (Shivit et al., 2018). Besides some focusing on material and economic support, the majority of interventions were centered on building socio- emotional life skills. Fewer were concentrated on community-level interventions and almost none on policy and institutional levels. In addition, researchers in the global south have stressed that living conditions in non- industrialized countries are very different from richer countries and are often marked by being out of the individual’s control (Mahali et al., 2018). In that line, changes that promote a more just environment for people living in the global south are fundamental for achieving a good life. Well-being of adolescent girls The study of adolescent well-being often studies gender as a potential predictor of well-being (Ronen et al., 2016). For example, many authors have studied the relationship between gender and 7 youth life satisfaction (a proxy for well-being), finding weak associations (Proctor et al., 2009). Since quantitative analyses have not shown a straightforward relationship between gender and well-being during adolescence (Ronen et al., 2016), it is often studied as gender-neutral, disregarding the qualitative differences on how well-being is experienced and defined depending on gender. Further, since personality traits have explained most of the variance in adolescents’ subjective well-being (Proctor et al., 2009), those variables have become the center of attention of well-being researchers. From this gender-neutral standpoint, psychological research on adolescent well-being promotion is largely based on fostering individual skills for adolescents, just like it is in adults. In addition to not considering gender, relationships between well-being and individual traits are presented as universal for all adolescents. This happens despite many researchers having emphasized that well-being is understood and experienced differently depending on gender and age, among many other factors (Eckermann, 2014). In addition, this standpoint also disregards how those factors are defined by structural forces of oppression and privilege and are at the same time interlocked and substantiated each other. As an example of gender-neutral approaches to the study of adolescent well-being, scholars have highlighted that for all adolescents, autonomy, competency, and optimism are defining attributes correlated with higher levels of subjective well-being (Avedissian & Alayan, 2021). According to these authors, those attributes are common to all adolescents and help them experience more positive affect and reduce risk behavior and increase resilience. While this statement may be true, girls in Latin America may be in a disadvantaged position to develop those attributes since they face important deprivations related to poverty, lack of opportunities, and harmful gender norms that limit their lives. The incidence of poverty among women is higher than men’s -for 100 men living in poverty, 112.7 women are living in the same situation-, showing that governmental policies are not being equally effective in reaching the female population (ECLAC, 8 2019). In addition, 18 million young women in Latin America do not go to school or work, teenage pregnancy rates in Latin America are one of the highest worldwide, and 1 in 4 girls is married or living in a non-matrimonial union by the age of 18 (Muller, 2020). These data suggest that girls face contextual barriers that likely affect their abilities to develop autonomy, competency, and optimism. Other researchers have found that personal coping mechanisms are fundamental skills to increase adolescents’ well-being, as they are related to their ability to face adversity (Ronen et al., 2016). However, by arguing that coping mechanisms will promote their well-being, adversity and structural factors are often left untouched. These factors are particularly prominent for girls’ lives, as they are disproportionally affected by abuse, violence, and hostile environments (UNICEF et al., 2020). Girls in Latin America are subjected to discriminatory practices and inequalities in an economic, physical, and political sense, affecting their trajectories and putting them at a disadvantage compared to their male peers (Céspedes & Robles, 2016). International agencies such as UNICEF and ECLAC have stressed that Latin American countries need to address the multiple systemic injustices that affect girls' development and well-being (Céspedes & Robles, 2016). In addition, many scholars have stressed that sociability and extraversion increase adolescent subjective well-being (Proctor et al., 2009). They encourage adolescents to build friendships, social relationships, connectedness, and positive relations (Avedissian & Alayan, 2021). This is suggested without considering that connectedness or isolation is not always related to the will of the adolescents or their psychological traits, and it may be experienced very differently depending on gender. For example, in a Norwegian study, the authors described how girls are immersed in a very complicated hierarchy, largely based on levels of physical attractiveness, that affects their popularity and their ability to make friends (Helseth & Misvær, 2010). Girls can be isolated or have few friends based on things that have nothing to do with their personality but rather with their physical appearance (and its interpretation depending on the cultural context). 9 Women and girls worldwide experience unfavorable objective conditions in comparison with their male peers, but the influence of gender socialization has been barely addressed in the study of well-being (Eckermann, 2014). To different degrees across cultures, gender norms have meant a disadvantage compared to their male peers, including having less access to opportunities and resources inside and outside their households (Glozah, 2015; Phiri & Abebe, 2016; Wilson & Somhlaba, 2016), like lacking access to education. In Latin American countries, the high cost of studying (both monetary and non-monetary, like transportation and materials) acts like a barrier (Machado & Muller, 2018). For girls, this is combined with discriminatory practices against young women on the job market, which creates uncertainty and low expectations regarding the returns of educational investments (Machado & Muller, 2018). Additionally, gender roles make girls assume more domestic chores and caregiving tasks compared to their male peers, which limits their educational opportunities, among other detrimental factors in their lives (Céspedes & Robles, 2016). While researchers have agreed upon the importance of inequities –many of them linked to gender– in shaping adolescents’ health and well-being (Patton et al., 2016), less has been done to understand those inequalities and address them to promote girls’ well-being in the community and society levels. Understanding the systemic conditions in which girls live, therefore, is a necessary step for well-being promotion. It sheds light on their everyday conditions and how those are affecting their well-being. Study background The data for this dissertation were collected in Coyhaique, the capital of Aysén region, in Chilean Patagonia. Located at the south part of the continent, Aysén is the third largest region in Chile, and the least populated one –only 103.158 inhabitants– (GORE Aysen, 2018). This small population is concentrated in a handful of towns, leaving vast portions of territories completely uninhabited. Over half (56%) of the regional population lives in Coyhaique (GORE Aysen, 2018) 10 where the regional services are concentrated. The presence of large rural areas is connected with a slow pace of living and the practice of traditional activities. It is highly isolated, has poor conditions of infrastructure and services, and lacks an appropriate amount of culture, food access, and commerce (Rodríguez Torrent et al., 2020). In comparison to the rest of the country, Aysén has low rates of poverty but its income gap is high, being a very inequal region (Rodríguez Torrent et al., 2020). The inequality is also present in terms of gender. The region shows a -25% income gap between men and women (GORE Aysen, 2018). Importantly, Aysén is the region with the highest male ratio in the country, but many of the homes are female headed (Macías, 2021), which can have important effects on the feminization of poverty. The population of young people in Aysén is moderately small. Of the regional total population, 7% are between 15 and 19 years old (GORE Aysen, 2018). According to Chile’s National Survey of Youth, 52% of the young people living in Aysén belong to the lowest socioeconomic level (INJUV Aysén, 2019). A 9% of adolescents between 14 and 17 are below the income poverty line (GORE Aysen, 2018). No specific information is available about gender differences within this age range. Regarding education, Aysén has the second lowest average of schooling years of the country, and only 73% percent of adolescents between 14 and 17 are enrolled in secondary education (GORE Aysen, 2018). Among the reasons for the relationship between the inequality levels, poverty rates and low average of years in education, is that many adolescents in Aysén dropout school and start working early in low qualified jobs, with low payment and scarce opportunities to achieve better salaries in the future (Macías, 2021). Again, this information is not disaggregated by gender. Aysén region has the highest rate of suicide among adolescents in Chile (Bustamante et al., 2018). Because of this, there has been important efforts nationwide to improve Aysén’s adolescents 11 mental health through the school system (Bustamante et al., 2018). There have been no systematic studies to explain the reasons beneath this trend. Sociopolitically, young people in Aysén tend to be more conservative than the rest of the country. For example, in Chile abortion is only legal if there are risks to woman’s life or health, fetal impairment or rape, but in Aysén, only 54% believe that abortion needs to be legal for fetal impairment, 69% in cases of rape, and only 24% believe it should be legal at a woman’s request (INJUV Aysén, 2019). In addition, only 49% believe that the morning-after pill should be available without restrictions, (INJUV Aysén, 2019). The same study reports that only 56% agree on the adoption of children by same-sex couples, and 62% on same-sex marriage. Regarding gender-based violence, Aysén has the largest rate of reports of sexual crimes in the country (GORE Aysen, 2018). Gender-based violence in Aysén, and particularly in Coyhaique, has shown a consistent increase over the last years, escalating at an alarming pace since the start of the pandemic (Ministerio de la Mujer y la Equidad de Género, 2021). In addition, 10% of young people living in Aysén agree with the statement “sometimes women have attitudes that justify them to receive acts of violence from their partners,” which is higher than the national average (INJUV Aysén, 2019). The information related to social issues in Aysén is extremely limited. However, the main statistics of the region aforementioned, and its population characteristics, suggest that there are several threats to girls’ well-being at different levels. Geographical isolation, lack of infrastructure, educational opportunity, and limited resources affect girls’ goals and opportunities. Pervasive gender-based violence and conservative values that support gender oppression create hostile environments for girls’ development. However, besides programs for teen pregnancy prevention, there are virtually no local or national public policies or government-led interventions that are focused on adolescent girls and their well-being. 12 STUDY JUSTIFICATION Mainstream psychology has proposed several recommendations for adolescents’ well-being promotion, focusing on individual changes and interventions. Although valuable, those recommendations are often gender-neutral and do not account for culture, failing to recognize the unique position of girls in their particular contexts. Globally, adolescent girls have the shared experience of being stigmatized and trivialized in their activities and concerns (Eckert, 2014). I argue that excluding the opinions and views of Latin American adolescent girls regarding factors that impact their well-being is a form of epistemic injustice (Spivak, 2010). Their voices should be considered as experts regarding their own well-being. This would produce valuable knowledge that could be integrated into the field of well-being. In addition, it contributes to social justice as it recognizes the knowledge produced by marginalized communities, often ignored by those who make decisions to promote their well-being. This study examined the perspectives of a particular group of adolescent girls that have not been studied before. Specifically, this dissertation explored the perspectives of ten girls living in Coyhaique to elucidate how they describe what contributes to their well-being. I hypothesized that while some or all of the participants would describe individual factors that lead to well-being, they would also bring in structural forces deserving of attention. I also hypothesized that those structural forces would be at least partially shaped by gender as well as the specific context experienced by Latin American girls. 13 METHOD Epistemological Approach This study is grounded in feminist theories from different feminist epistemologies, with the main focus on feminist community psychology. According to some authors, that approach has challenged the hegemony of western-centric knowledge systems, aiming to enhance the knowledge produced by the communities of women living in the global south (Kiguwa & Segalo, 2019). A central tenet of feminist epistemologies is that our location in the society as women affects our perspectives about the world and our interpretation regarding human activities (Narayan, 2004), which in turn has an influence on how and what knowledge is produced. Feminist researchers have long challenged the gender-neutral stance adopted by psychology, and feminist standpoint theorists have advocated for recognizing gender differences, critiquing the androcentrism pervasive in psychology (Cosgrove, 2003). However, to avoid essentialism, it is necessary to recognize that social and environmental forces are involved in the production of the individual and there is no universal experience of a ‘woman.’ Race, ethnicity, culture, age, and class, among many other factors, determine important differences in women’s experiences. If this diversity is not recognized there is a risk of reinforcing ideas of gender-based normativity through research that generalizes some women's experiences as if they were representative of all women. Feminist epistemologies recognize that scientific knowledge and evidence are grounded in experience, and in the case of oppressed social groups, that experience can be a source of critical insight (Harding, 2004). In that line, feminist epistemologies propose that knowers are always situated in relationship to several categories -including gender as a social situation-, and those influence the way they relate to knowledge (Anderson, 2020). Although there are many feminisms and feminist epistemologies, the main focus of this study is on its application to the field of feminist community psychology. Feminists from the global 14 south have insisted that feminism in psychology should expand its notions to incorporate the reality of women from non-industrialized countries, whose experiences regarding gender oppression can be quite different from those of the western countries (Boonzaier & van Niekerk, 2019). For example, reproductive rights, including laws legalizing abortion, are still rare in Latin American countries, and face important backlashes from powerful conservative sectors (Biroli & Caminotti, 2020). In the same line, the experiences of adolescent girls living in the global south are also marked by a variety of forms of oppression that are not necessarily present in the lives of adult women or girls from industrialized countries. Some feminist researchers have argued that, during adolescence, girls enter into a social system that is structured by gender roles, in which they, for example, develop certain skills and not others (Eckert, 2014). Traditionally -at least in Latin America- girls are seen as more likely to assume domestic and private tasks, while adolescent boys are more likely to develop public ones, which, in turn, have consequences in their career paths (Guerra et al., 2000). These gender roles are partially maintained by discursive practices that preserve social orders in which adults are superior to adolescents and men are superior to women -and everyone else is inferior to the upper-middle-class white male (Eckert, 2014). The particular positionality of adolescent girls living in Latin America, not only affects their social relationships, but also creates differences in the way they perceive the world and produce knowledge about it. Lastly, consistent with the way well-being is studied within psychology, a wide range of scholars have failed to recognize the structural forces that shape women’s experiences, which results in their interpreting social problems as psychological problems and proposing changes in individuals instead of within social arrangements (Cosgrove, 2003). On the contrary, feminism rooted within Community Psychology has promoted changes that involve challenging those oppressive contexts instead of on changing individuals. This is particularly important for women in the global south, in which living conditions affecting people’s well-being are often, unrelated to their responsibility as 15 individuals, but connected to structural injustices (Mahali et al., 2018), making changes at the individual level less relevant. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) In line with this project's aims, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) was selected to analyze the data. FCDA comes from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a research movement that aims to analyze social problems and unveil the reproduction of oppressive social structures through discourse (Van Dijk, 2008). This type of analysis elucidates how the things people do every day contain and reproduce certain discourses (Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002). It examines how language manifests the structural relationships of dominance, power imbalances, control, and discrimination (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000). In addition, it is oriented toward achieving social transformation by recognizing that certain forms of oppression are sustained through language, including gender social order (Lazar, 2005). In that line, using CDA tools, researchers can advance beyond descriptions to a deeper understanding of sociopolitical implications of discourse, shedding light on the construction of common sense, dominant discourse, ideological formation, and cultural meaning systems that guide how people think and interact with each other (Carlquist et al., 2017). The notion of discourse adopted by CDA is that of language-in-use, which includes different forms of signification and meaning-making, either verbal or nonverbal (Given, 2008). In CDA, it is assumed that discourses influence how social life is structured and aims to explain that relationship (Given, 2008). FCDA shares the tenets of CDA but adds the perspectives of feminist scholars who have explored ideological matters on gender-based inequalities (Lazar, 2018). FCDA has many similarities with CDA: it understands discourse as a social practice, recognizes the interaction of discourses as recontextualizations of previous discourses, assumes the construction of meaning as a local process, and emphasizes reflexivity and positionality as a necessary process of discourse analysis (Baxter, 16 2008). However, FCDA emerges as a way to explicitly address the need for changing the current conditions of gender relations and maintains a specific focus on feminist concerns as distinct social wrongs (Lazar, 2005). Specifically, FCDA aims to theorize and analyse from a critical feminist perspective the particularly insidious and oppressive nature of gender as an omni-relevant category in most social practices (Lazar, 2005, p. 3). FCDA is aligned with the research aims, as it can be used to analyze girls’ perceptions of what leads to well-being, using a gendered approach to defamiliarize social practices that maintain the social order. Data source CDA usually analyzes written or oral texts obtained from several sources, including interviews (Given, 2008). This dissertation study used interview data from a Master's Thesis done by the author during 2018 (pilot) and 2019. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with four girls in a pilot phase and eight girls after the pilot. The interviews were conducted in Spanish and were audio-recorded. All the girls were from low-income families, aged 15 to 19, living in Coyhaique. Only one of the participants belonged to an indigenous community (Mapuche) and one of the participants was a mother. Two participants identified as part of the LGBTQI+ community. The interviews were conducted in person by the author of this dissertation. The interview protocol of questions can be found in Appendix A. The thesis focused on girls’ understanding of well-being across multiple domains (home, school, peers). What became clear in listening to the girls and reading the interview transcripts was that girls’ understanding of well-being appeared to be influenced by social and structural factors related to gender. Therefore, this dissertation involved re-examining the data, using critical discourse analysis, to elucidate the gendered structural forces that participants described as affecting their well- being. 17 For this dissertation, I analyzed data from ten interviews. Seven were from the Master’s thesis (one of the eight participants asked to be removed from the study), and three were from the pilot project leading to the thesis. While critical discourse analysis methodologists do not give explicit guidelines for sample size, qualitative researchers who aim to maintain an extensive in-depth, thick, and rich analysis propose sample sizes of three to sixteen participant (Robinson, 2014). The sample size for this study was 10 interviews, which falls within this range and includes a manageable amount of data for one researcher alone to analyze. Table 1: Summary of Data Pseudonym Age Duration Source Antonia 15 1:24 Master thesis Gema 18 1:22 Master thesis Ivone 15 1:31 Master thesis Jesse 19 2:02 Master thesis Kathy 18 1:51 Master thesis Princess Kim 17 1:30 Master thesis Tessa 16 1:20 Master thesis Joy 19 1:59 Pilot Zeito 15 2:36 Pilot Cami 19 1:30 Pilot Age average: 17.1 years old 18 Data preparation Transcription A Chilean transcriber transcribed all of the audio recordings to maintain language accuracy. All the identifiable information was deleted from the interviews to ensure participants’ confidentiality. To facilitate the interpretation of the data using discourse analysis, each transcript was first organized into stanzas –(i.e., a block of information that contains information about an event; (Gee, 2014)). Data was coded stanza by stanza, understanding a stanza as the minimal unit of analysis. This is called a broad transcription (Gee, 2014), as the analysis is not focused on the linguistic level, in which the details of language and language use are explored. This analysis aimed to understand an overall idea of what each participant was trying to communicate in each part of the story or episode and to interpret its meaning from a critical perspective. The stanza organization is helpful for maintaining a rigorous analysis that is able to interpret the different parts of the narrated event. The transcripts were imported to MAXQDA –a software for qualitative data analysis– that was used to organize the information and guide the analysis and interpretation. Table 2 is an example of a transcript’s organization: Table 2: Example of Stanza Organization Original transcript Translation STANZA 1 STANZA 1 Bueno, como siempre era repetitivo que la comunicación, Well, since the assistant principal was always sending notes [to parents] y que el aro, y que luego el pelo, talking about my earrings, or my hair, mi papá igual se enojaba conmigo. my dad was upset with me. STANZA 2 STANZA 2 Me decía que… He would tell me 19 Table 2 (cont’d) cómo iba a ser tantas veces y todo el tema, How is it possible that this had happened so many times and all those things Translation It is best practice to avoid translating transcriptions before analysis (Esposito, 2001; Richardson et al., 2017). Qualitative researchers have noted the numerous issues associated with translating data from one language to another before analysis (Richardson et al., 2017). In particular, context and connotation are usually hard to translate in a clear and succinct way (Esposito, 2001), which affects the accurate interpretation of data. I was born and raised in Chile. As a Chilean, I had no problems conducting the interviews, even while the participants used slang and expressions. However, it is extremely difficult to translate those expressions without spending a long time trying to explain meaning and context to an English reader. The analysis and interpretation of the utterances are also affected by the translation. Thus, in order to maintain data accuracy, I analyzed the data in Spanish. In writing the dissertation in English, I presented fragments of analyzed data in both Spanish and English to show my analytical rationale. Analytical approach To appropriately address the research question, the analysis needed to recognize structural conditions in the girls’ stories. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) connects the human experiences with the cultural, political and social context in which it appears (Fairclough, 2001). Fairclough’s approach to CDA analyzes social practices, understanding that social practices are what connects the everyday individual actions with the larger social structures in which people operate (Given, 2008). Social practices are seen as any form of relatively stable action in society, which both reproduces the structure and can transform it (Fairclough, 2001). Social practices are compounded by multiple interrelated elements. A very important element for CDA is semiosis, which includes any 20 form of meaning-making, including language (Fairclough, 2001), and its defined as “the intersubjective production of meaning” (Fairclough et al., 2004, p. 23). Therefore, CDA analyzes language -i.e., semiosis, a collective and local manifestation of shared meaning- to link how individual actions are produced by social forces. To conduct the analysis, I took Fairclough’s approach to CDA and adapted it for recognizing the structural influences on girls’ well-being from a gendered perspective. I read the interviews and examined fragments that referred to social practices. Those fragments were coded using a qualitative analysis software (MAXQDA2020) through a deductive coding strategy to identify the elements contained in the social practices. Table 3 shows the codebook I used to organize the interview data into different elements that constitute a social practice from a gender perspective. Table 3: Codebook for Deductive Coding Code Definition Contribution to RQ Examples Positionalities Girls’ subjective Recognition of the References to social evaluation of their relationships between identities (Gender position in their girls’ social identities Race/ethnicity community and how they are Sexual orientation perceived by others. Class) Roles and social Roles played when they Explanations of the Gender roles in expectations are in relationship with impact of gender roles different life domains. others. for girls’ daily lives Expectations of and social expectations behavior. affecting their behavior. 21 Table 3 (cont’d) Reflections Girls’ evaluations, Recognition of Evaluations or reflective questions, subjective opinions of living insights, thoughts, or interpretations and conditions, analysis of their life and evaluations of structural relationships with living conditions. matters that family/peers/school, lead/prevent well- perceptions of their being. Highlights girls’ own life, comparisons voices, perspectives, with others. and opinions. Material Factors Material living Descriptions of material Family income. conditions that affect structural forces that Housing situation. girls’ life and well-being. affect girls’ well-being. Educational infrastructure. Geographical particularities of Coyhaique (e.g. isolation, lack of services). Community Cultural specificities of Accounts of relevant Coyhaique’s cultural cultural values the community that manifestations of values (e.g. affect girls’ experience. culture and local conservativism, specificities. machismo) 22 After coding each interview, a second analytical step was grouping the coded information into social practices, which were named and added as a new set of codes in the qualitative analysis software. I looked for fragments that were heavily coded to identify social practices. I wrote an individual memo for each interview, using some of the fragments to explain how the identified social practices were related to the participant’s well-being and made some connections to the existing literature on well-being. All individual memos can be found in Appendix B. Each memo includes a background vignette of the participant’s life, their definition of well-being, and a summary of the most relevant themes from the interview. The coding process revealed that some elements of social practices were mentioned more frequently than others in participants’ discourses about well-being. The most often-used code was reflections, which concentrated the responses about opinions and evaluation of their lives and life domains, including school, peers, and family. Reflections were primarily concentrated on school and peer relationships within the school. The code community cultural values –used to explain local specificities that influence their well-being– was often used in connection to reflection, being the most recurrent relationship between codes. Community cultural values was mainly used to talk about machismo and gender-based violence. Material factors were strongly related to poverty and financial stress. As all the participants were from low-income families, material factors were usually mentioned to describe feeling overwhelmed by their financial future, assuming material responsibilities, and making decisions to achieve financial stability. With a few exceptions, material factors were used to talk about the negative impact of poverty in girls’ lives. Roles and social expectations were mainly used to describe different forms of pressure girls experience in their families and schools, and that negatively impacted them. Roles were related to community cultural values, showing an apparent relationship between local specificities and its 23 definition of gender roles. The least used code was positionalities, which was used to refer to positions related to gender, sexual orientation, and other social positions. There is only one brief mention of ethnicity (Kathy) and two about class (Carla and Jesse). Positionality and roles and social expectations were often mentioned together in an interrelated way. Each social practice was added to a map using color coded boxes to identify the data source. When one social practice was repeated in different interviews (e.g., community mistreatment, taking care of others), I grouped them together in the map. I used this map to elucidate patterns of social practices and the way they influence girls’ well-being, which are described in detail in the results of this dissertation. Ethics Ethical recommendations for qualitative methods are often connected to ensure participants’ confidentiality and dignity (Brodsky et al., 2016). To protect the identity of the participants, all identifiable data has been removed from the interview transcripts and the names used are all pseudonyms. Regarding participants’ dignity, I avoided unifying the experiences of the participants into a “single story” (Adichie, 2009), which would have been resulted in only some narratives being highlighted. Particularly, I intentionally depicted participants’ experiences as diverse, honoring their complexity. For example, by only making salient the positive side of girls’ lives, I would be risking making invisible their struggles, and would be contributing to maintaining the status quo. On the other hand, if I only highlighted vulnerabilities and needs, images of inferiority and prejudices could be exaggerated. To maintain the necessary balance, I kept a journal with weekly entries for reflexivity. In addition, both CDA and community psychology share an interest in the achievement of social justice and social changes. It is an ethical imperative to produce findings that are relevant to 24 the adolescent girls who live in Coyhaique, and that can be shared with their community. At the end of this dissertation, key messages from the findings regarding girls’ situation and girls’ opinions will be disseminated through local media and Aysén’s regional university to reach the local community. Researcher’s position and role According to the principles that ground this project, qualitative and feminist research recommend being explicit about the position of the researcher. As a Chilean woman, I thought growing up in a somewhat similar culture would allow me to relate to most girls’ experiences. In addition, since my husband and I lived in Coyhaique for a couple of years before I started my Ph.D. and moved to the U.S., I thought I was familiar enough with the local culture and also aware of the majority of the local news, events, and social history. All of those aspects were key to giving this project viability, appearing in front of girls not completely as an outsider. During the interviews, I realized that my personal history and characteristics and my position as a researcher largely intervened in what they would share with me and how they would do it. The age and cultural difference played an important role in defining what types of things girls would comment on with me. Some participants spent part of the interview trying to explain to me some terms related to their daily activities and preferences, such as words associated with K-Pop, cosplay, fan art, names of TV shows, etc. I was unable to grasp the meaning of some things during the interview, and I needed to ask for additional help after the interview was over. It is likely that I have missed important elements in the analysis due to my lack of knowledge about these elements of girls’ culture. In addition, many of them were often reluctant to share their interests with me, thinking I did not care about those aspects of their lives. They were noticeably surprised when I asked if they could say more about those things. Some participants said they did not have interesting lives or that 25 the things they liked to do were not worthy of being mentioned in the interview. On the other hand, it is likely that I was more enthusiastic about some themes and stories than others, and they would then tend to tell me more about those things. For example, I was very interested in the different types of violence they faced; although that was not the direct topic of the interview, I tended to probe more when that topic was mentioned. Many of the participants treated me using the formal you, “usted,” which denotes formal relationships as well as age differences. I believe that this type of relationship augmented the chance of them telling me socially desirable answers. I also assume that if they treat me as “usted” it is likely that they did not feel comfortable sharing more private themes with me. For example, only one participant openly talked to me about sex, and none of them mentioned anything about alcohol or drugs. Some of the participants also wanted to protect their families and were unsure if they should share specific episodes that entailed family violence, sexual abuse, abandonment, or alcoholism. They said that explicitly. In some cases, this was a matter of family privacy and, for others, of legal protection, as they were not clear if I was going to disclose this information to someone else. For example, one participant said she wanted to tell me something about a family member, but I needed to promise I would not tell anyone else. Another participant vaguely mentioned an abuse situation but asked me not to ask for further details. A third participant answered one of my questions by saying, “forget it, that is something we are not going to talk about.” I tried to be clear that the interview was confidential and, at the same time to be respectful and not push them or probe them to talk more about those or any other issues that were uncomfortable for them. I approached this research from a specific feminist perspective, one that believes that feminism needs to promote the interest of the 99% (Arruzza et al., 2019) and that we need to reconfigure the structures of an inherently unequal system. I am aware that my experience living in 26 Aysén as an adult, educated, middle-class woman was marked by privilege, and I wanted to be particularly vigilant about not using that privilege to adopt ways in research in which women can oppress other women. I recognize that this was not always the case. For example, during the interviews I realized some of the participants and/or participants’ mothers or fathers worked for friends of mine, which made the class difference apparent. I felt awkward about it, as I realized that if they knew about those friendships, it could become an imposition. I also knew that it would affect the way in which they would present in front of me. I regret not noticing or considering those situations before doing the interviews, but Coyhaique is very small and it was likely that the participants and I would know some of the same people. The interview situation was also affected by my positionality as a professional. When I presented myself as a psychologist, girls confused me with a clinician and said and silenced things based on that image. Since there are only a handful of clinical psychologists in the region, it is often impossible to get an appointment or pay for that service. I realized that some participants and their mothers saw the interview as if it was an opportunity to get a cost-free session of psychotherapy. Other participants were sure I was working for their parents and that I was going to tell them about their problems or secrets. We discussed those situations, and I tried to clarify that I was not that kind of psychologist in all the interviews, but the stereotype remained. It is likely that this was a reason for some of them to be very open and even vulnerable with me –e.g., some cried during the interviews– or act defensively as if they were under scrutiny. In addition, a mother of one of the participants approached me after the interview to ask me if her daughter “was clearer about some stuff,” assuming that some sort of therapeutic change was going to happen during the interview. Some participants also asked me about psychology as a career and if I believed that they were capable of studying it. Psychology was a career that was not offered in the region at that time. I wanted to support their hopes, and, at the same time, I knew that their ability might have nothing to 27 do with their possibility of studying out of the region. I avoided those questions as I did not want to disappoint them, but I also realized that they did not have many chances to talk to someone who had studied the career. Lastly, all the interviews were done in coffee shops, so we could be in a protected yet private space, where no one would hear our conversation, and we could share a meal (very important in Chilean culture for building trust). I did not consider that people I knew from my time living in Coyhaique would see me in those coffee shops and approach me during the interviews. Friends stopped by to talk to me and asked about my family and my academic program. I deemed those encounters as disruptive and was uncomfortable for the participants and me. I did not want the participants to know much about me and avoided talking about personal things when they were listening. I felt particularly worried that while they were talking about their issues, I was going to be showing such a privileged position in comparison. For example, considering that moving out of Aysén to study is so hard for so many families, I tried not to mention that I was studying abroad. I felt nervous and ashamed when someone brought it up in front of a participant, which affected the overall climate of the interview and how trust was built between us. Qualitative rigor and trustworthiness Although there is little guidance on how to maintain quality and rigor for CDA findings in particular, Mullet (2018) took recommendations of different methodologists and elaborated a list of criteria for rigor especially for CDA. The following table adapts Mullet’s list for this particular project, adding a column that explains which actions were adopted for meeting the quality requirements. I excluded the criteria that were specific to other forms of CDA (e.g., focus on linguistics) that diverged from the scope of this project. 28 Table 4: Adaptation of Mullet's guidelines for Qualitative Rigor in CDA (Mullet 2018, P.121) Criterion Objective Evidence of rigor Application to this project Reflexivity Transparent view of Self-reflective journal, peer Self- reflective whose reality is debriefing, asking for journal. represented in the clarification, member research checking, focus groups. Subjectivity Transparent view of Researcher’s articulation of Positionality research bias own positionality, monitoring statement. Bi-weekly of self, and rigorous meetings with subjectivity. academic advisor. Adequacy of The data gathered Enough data supports the Additional data (pilot data offers enough evidence. Sampling strategy is interviews) are evidence. Findings are adequate to research incorporated to this based on a sample that objectives. study to increase the is adequate in size and sample size. The variety. interview cases were selected using purposeful sampling. Adequacy of Interpretations are Repeated forays into the data Repeated reading of interpretation based on transparent (e.g., repeated readings of transcript. Memos of analytical strategy and transcripts) analytical process. rigorous read of data. 29 Table 4 (cont’d) Authenticity Findings are presented Findings recommend changes Purposeful avoidance in a way that respect to redistribute power. of single narratives in the participants’ Different understandings of findings. complex reality and the study phenomena are the diversity of their illustrated. experiences. Consequential Social or political Increased consciousness: Findings of the validity change perspectives of those who are dissertation are silenced or disempowered are focused on amplifying amplified. the voices of a population that is often not heard. CDA rejects claims of objectivity and neutrality (Mullet, 2018). The quality of research depends on researchers’ ability to be transparent and rigorous in their analytical strategy, the inclusion of positionality and reflexivity as methodical research practices, and also, by findings that are consistent with CDA’s commitment to social change and justice. To accomplish this, I maintained a detailed registry of my research process, through journaling and frequent meetings with my academic advisor. 30 RESULTS Study results are organized into three sections. The first section describes how the adolescent girls defined well-being, and the subsequent sections delineate the factors that they believed contribute to it. As expected, they identified both individual and structural factors that they think lead to their well-being. Section two describes the individual-level factors: (1) optimism, (2) resilience and strength, (3) extraversion, and (4) individualism/determination. The third section focuses on structural factors that affect girls’ well-being, separated into: (1) access to material resources and opportunities and material stability, (2) direct support networks, (3) institutional response and, (3) safe community environment. Findings are then summarized. How participants defined well-being Participants had different definitions of what well-being was for them. All the participants defined well-being from a psychological standpoint, stating it as synonymous with happiness or other positive feelings, such as being calm, comfortable, and having emotional balance, using phrases like “when someone feels psychologically happy” (Tessa). These definitions aligned with dominant discourses of well-being in psychology that describe it as a subjective state of mind. Some participants added that well-being is an arrangement of conditions that include having material resources, positive relationships, and adequate support. For example, Ivone defined it as “to be comfortable with my family relationships, and regarding money. To have material stability,” highlighting positive relationships with material resources. Another participant defined it as “well-being is feeling comfortable, with myself, in the place I am, with the people around me” (Princess Kim), which is more oriented to social relationships and one’s position within the community. These definitions combined psychological and subjective evaluations with objective conditions that lead to well-being. Additionally, some participants have defined well-being as a basal state that results from not lacking anything needed. For instance, Gema described it as “having mental peace, not being uncomfortable, 31 to have good health, not having toxic relationships.” Gema included factors that need to be absent to reach well-being in her definition. In that sense, well-being cannot be achieved if certain elements are in place and, at the same time, is defined by the absence of those factors. Likewise, Ivone complemented her definition as “knowing that you don’t lack anything. In any life dimension,” which is more unspecific and points out that well-being is dependent upon a set of minimum conditions. Gema’s and Ivone’s definition challenged the possibility of achieving subjective well-being in inadequate contexts. These two definitions are more similar to social justice approaches to well- being that highlight the importance of appropriate objective conditions and the absence of damaging ones. Individual-level factors identified by participants as leading to well-being Optimism Participants saw optimism as an individual positive attitude towards life in general, an expectancy that things would go right for them, and they will attain their goals. Optimism contributes to participants’ well-being as it works as a positive lens to interpret their living situation and is considered a strategy to face problems and adversity. For example, Zeito faces a serious disease that limited her activities and forced her to travel to Santiago frequently, which is an economic hardship for her family. However, during the interview, she commented on these situations with a cheerful attitude. When I asked if these factors were negatively affecting her well- being, she said no, because she had decided to maintain an optimistic view of everything in her life, including the bad. In her words, “smiling is the best medicine,” highlighting that optimism was needed to overcome her disease and potential depressive feelings. In this way, optimism acted as a buffer, balancing the negative affect derived from the disease. Kathy also has adopted an optimistic attitude towards life. She commented that she believes she can do whatever she sets her mind to and that she will attain all her goals. In addition, Kathy 32 said she thinks that when something bad happens to her, it should be taken as an isolated event, trusting that things will get better. The following stanza shows her optimistic rationale. Fragment 1: Kathy STANZA 135 STANZA 135 K: No, si yo siempre he dicho K: No, I’ve always said que un mal día es un mal día, That a bad day is a bad day siempre viene algo malo, That always something bad comes o sea, algo malo, algo bueno Is something bad, something good I: Algo malo y algo bueno I: Something bad and something good K: Porque no sé, K: Because I don’t know si yo me hubiera estancado aquí, If I would be stalled here quizás nunca me hubiera pasado lo que está aquí Maybe this other thing would’ve never happened to me I: Que ahora estas contenta y todo I: that you are happy now, and all that K: Sí, muy contenta K: Yes, really happy Ya, ¿Y entonces ahora estás trabajando para qué meta? I: What is your new goal now? K: Ahora quiero postular a una casa. K: I want to apply for a house In this fragment, Kathy explained how she tried to interpret the things happening in her life as a series of events that ultimately can contribute to her well-being. With the phrase “that a bad day is a bad day,” she referred to how bad events or bad circumstances are temporary, and one needs to believe they will be over. The phrase “if I would be stalled here, maybe this other thing would’ve never happened to me” highlights that optimism is a form of agency; when she chose not to be “stalled” –which she uses as a synonym of having a pessimist attitude– she allows for good things to happen to her, that currently make her very happy. This fragment is framed in a larger conversation about her goal- 33 oriented personality and how optimism is tied to her ability to meet her goals. Adding some cultural context to the last sentence, it needs to be noted that applying for state housing is really hard in Chile. In that sense, Kathy displayed optimism in that comment, as her goal is very ambitious and not only a matter of determination but luck. Princess Kim also believed that optimism leads to well-being. She explained that she and her classmates are under high pressure regarding the future. A pessimist attitude is detrimental to her mental health, adding stress and anxiety to her life: “I feel I’m interested in many things, but I feel fear that things won’t go well (…) I know I should not be so anxious about those things. I think that’s important.” On the contrary, being confident that she will be able to achieve her goals is a positive state of mind that helps her concentrate and deal with stress. Importantly, optimism was seen by girls as a personality feature independent of life events or circumstances that can be developed. Not all participants felt that they are optimistic, but they valued that attitude and tried to adopt it to face their daily lives. Gema described trying to be optimistic, to always behave positively and look cheerful, although she was having a hard time. As she explained it in the fragment below: Fragment 2: Gema STANZA 38 STANZA 38 I: Ah, ya, ya. ¿Y ahora una cosa buena quizás? I: Oh, ok. Ok. Let’s talk about something good, maybe? G: No sé, G: I don’t know… a pesar That, despite que yo siempre fui al final positiva, I was always positive, at the end Igual intentaba, I keep trying ah como la clásica, era la niñita feliz Like the typical, I was the happy little girl 34 Fragment 2 (cont’d) pero igual estaba mal por otras cosas Although I felt bad for other things too In this case, Gema identified optimism as a desirable personality trait that she also connected to a female characteristic. The utterance “The typical, I was the happy little girl” is used to describe how she expected others would see her, and also a generic image or stereotype of girls. Even when optimism was a superficial behavior that did not reflect her inner sentiment, Gema described it as a socially desirable personal characteristic that she believes can contribute to her well-being. Resilience and strength The participants had faced different events that were detrimental to their lives. Some of those events were part of their current living situation, while others have influenced their well-being in the past. For participants, resilience was the ability to recover from those detrimental events, and strength was the ability to work through those events when they happen. Both resilience and strength were interconnected in the discourse of participants as necessary for achieving well-being. For example, Kathy referred to a bullying situation as something that ultimately made her stronger and taught her how to defend herself: “after all I went through with that girl, I became stronger. If she yelled at me, I yelled louder.” The same participant had a similar reflection about her first boyfriend, who raped her. She mentioned the event as something that harmed her but also made her stronger: “I’ve always thought that it made me stronger, although it damaged me.” For Kathy, to be strong was necessary for well-being because when something bad happens, one never should “lie down to die.” On the contrary, she thinks she needed to be strong to overcome obstacles without losing a positive attitude. She compared herself to her brother, who, in case of feeling sad or having a bad day, “will lie down to die, as he is very weak of mind.” As this quote shows, Kathy believed that being strong is a personality trait that some people have, and others do not. 35 On a similar note, Gema explained she overcame a bullying-related depression by herself through strength and determination. Gema’s experiences of bullying and depression were severe, and she received external help, including psychological attention. However, she deemed therapy as unhelpful. Gema said she eventually convinced herself that these things could be passed by without being affected by them. In that sense, Gema stressed that she was able to overcome depression by herself. She commented, “at the end, I found motivation on my own.” Joy also had a self-sufficient approach to resilience and strength, understanding it as a matter of decision and determination, as shown in the following fragment: Fragment 3: Joy STANZA 262 STANZA 262 yo después dije no And then I said no yo soy fuerte I am strong y yo me la puedo, I can do it he pasado por tantas cosas I have already lived so many things un rayón más One more craziness no va a hacer la diferencia. Won’t make a difference This fragment is taken from Joy’s explanations about her reluctance to receive psychiatric treatment after a suicide attempt. This happened some years after her mother died, and Joy was faring poorly at school, was depressed, and felt lonely and misunderstood. Joy’s brother found her when she attempted suicide, and Joy got very shocked by his reaction. She explained that this reaction made her decide to heal from depression, so she will not hurt her loved ones. She agreed to receive psychological therapy but did not want to take medication. The fragment is reflecting her rationale to get over the depression, based on being strong – “I am strong”– determined – “I can do it”– and resilient –“I’ve already lived so many things.” Joy described this event as key for shaping her 36 current personality. For Joy, to be strong and resilient was a critical step to heal and achieve well- being. Princess Kim talked about this topic but from a different perspective. She interpreted being strong and resilient as a natural consequence of loving oneself. She took the example of a K-Pop band that sings about “having a bulletproof jacket” against what others say about them. This included not only peers but the pressure that comes from adults to achieve certain goals or be in a certain way. In that sense, creating a shield of self-love gave her strength and protected her from opinions that are stressful and harmful. Through developing self-love, one can be resilient and strong to face other people and ultimately achieve well-being. Extraversion Some participants described that openly expressing their opinions, being talkative, and being socially active are features that allow them to achieve well-being. Being extroverted let them expand their social circle and feel comfortable in social situations. Kathy explained that she is often the one chosen to talk to adults at school and represent classmates, making her feel proud of her outspoken personality. As an example, she described a situation of competing in a contest with some classmates outside school: “she (teacher) said, you Kathy, you speak. Because the others would be ashamed. And after that we won.” Joy defined herself as having “excess of personality,” being outspoken, liking to talk to everyone, feeling secure in social situations. Joy explained that this impacted her classmates, who were shyer and sometimes envied her, but ultimately valued and respected by her because of these characteristics. They even named her class president. Joy also explained that being extroverted helped her avoid gossiping and fights with peers, who felt afraid of messing with her. Different from Kathy and Joy, Princess Kim defines herself as introverted. In her case, she identified being extroverted as leading to well-being. For example, she mentioned that a situation 37 that made her feel happy and proud of herself was when she had to speak in public, and it went well. I asked Princess Kim what kind of things have contributed to her well-being, and she answered: “It is funny, but when I needed to do a play. I’m a really shy person and acting in front of everyone was giving me chills. But I felt well, and it was a fun thing to try it (…). I was out of my comfort zone, and it was nice.” She also recognizes that her favorite thing is to dance, but she is too shy to show it. In that sense, being shy also limits her activities. In her words, “It is not in my comfort zone to go out and show myself to the world.” Tessa reflected on how being extroverted is important for well-being. She described that before starting high school, she was timid and preferred not to give her opinion about things. When high school started, no one knew her, so she decided to become extroverted. Tessa described that she did not like how she was before. The following fragment refers to these feelings: Fragment 4: Tessa STANZA 17 STANZA 17 I: Ya, y eso, cuando tú dices I: Ok, and that, when you say que antes no te gustaba cómo eras, That you don’t like how you were before y ahora si te gusta cómo eres, And now you do like how you are ¿Cómo es la diferencia? What’s the difference? T: Es que era un poco más tímida, T: I was a little shyer no me gustaba mucho I didn’t like to dar mi opinión acerca de los temas, give my opinion about things tenía mi círculo de amistad I had my circle of friends demasiado cerrado, It was too closed. yo y una amiga Me and a friend y con eso me bastaba, And that was it y todo me daba mucha vergüenza, I got very embarrassed by everything 38 Fragment 4 (cont’d) bueno, ahora igual, pero menos Well, now too, but less In this fragment, Tessa explained that before being more extroverted, she had a limited ability to express her opinions. Being introverted also made her have fewer friends and, therefore, a less extended support network. She also described often experiencing negative affect, noticeable in the phrase “I got embarrassed by everything.” All these consequences of being introverted were pointing to lower levels of well-being. In contrast, the opposite would mean having more friends, being able to express her thoughts, and feeling less ashamed, ultimately leading to more well-being. Tessa mentioned that her father always reinforced an introverted attitude, as he believes it was the appropriate behavior for a girl. In that sense, being extroverted is not always supported by the environment, since girls in traditional contexts such as Coyhaique should be quiet, shy, do not stand out, respectful, and avoid being provocative. These characteristics are reinforced by parents and teachers from childhood, and many participants described being reprimanded when they stepped out of these social expectations, as would be explained later in the section on structural factors. Individualism and determination. Several participants believe that they can reach well-being through being determined and goal-oriented. They think that working hard, particularly in terms of academic success, will lead to well-being, and that requires discipline, responsibility, and individualism. For example, Jesse explains that an individualistic and determined attitude would allow her to have good grades, which was important for her (future) well-being. This idea was taught by her parents, as she explained: Fragment 5: Jesse STANZA 178 STANZA 178 Ellos decían, They [parents] said, 39 Fragment 5 (cont’d) "a nosotros no nos importa si llegas con un 7, “we don’t care if you get a 7, para nosotros eso no es... sí, es lindo" for us, that is not… ok, is nice” dijo, siempre me decía mi papá eso, He said, my father always said that "para mí es lindo, pero no... “for me is nice, but no…” a mí no me va a afectar ni me va a influir en nada, It won’t affect me or have any impact on me porque eso es para tu futuro, because that is for your future tú vas a ver que, si vas a ser una buena estudiante, you will see that if you are a good student si vas a tener un bienestar, you will have well-being todo eso te lo tienes que ganar tú" dijo and that’s something you need to achieve yourself,” he said Jesse’s fragment illustrates a common discourse of well-being that makes it a logical consequence of effort. This discourse can be summarized as if you work hard enough, you will reach well-being. This type of discourse shaped her personality, as it brings desirable cultural values that reinforce certain behaviors and attitudes. Jesse’s fragment explains that to follow a path for future well-being is an individual task. To be a good student is not something that a girl should do to please their parents, but an individual choice that would ultimately only affect them. In a similar line, Joy said she believes that being responsible and organized with money is fundamental for well-being since it allows one to live a life without the detrimental consequences of financial stress. Fragment 6: Joy STANZA 11 STANZA 11 J: Y eso es importante para mi J: And that is important for me porque uno puede estar en el aire Because one cannot be in the air 40 Fragment 6 (cont’d) I: ¿Por qué creis que es importante para ti eso? I: Why do you think it is important for you? J: Porque yo no tengo casa, J: Because I don’t have a house para mi la única opción es arrendar for me, the only option is to rent y uno tiene que ser ordenado con las cuentas and one needs to be organized with the bills porque o si no, because otherwise, anda deprimido, anda triste, anda preocupado, anda one is depressed sad, worried, jittery nervioso STANZA 12 STANZA 12 I: ¿Alguna vez te pasó eso a ti? I: Did that happened to you, ever? J: no J: No I: tu siempre has sido responsable con la plata I: You have been always responsible with your money J: Si, porque, bueno mi papá siempre, J: Yes. Because, well, my dad always como tenían hijos pequeños, because he has little kids ellos tienen tres niñas pequeñas, they have three little girls siempre no les alcanzaba, and they always were out of money entonces yo le decía and I told him que fueran más ordenados con la plata. that they should be more organized with money Yo los vi y dije ah no, I saw them and I said, oh no yo tengo que ser de una manera diferente, I have to be different porque o si no mi vida no va a funcionar, because otherwise my life won’t work porque lamentablemente because sadly la plata es un factor importante money is a critical factor 41 Fragment 6 (cont’d) para mantener una familia, to meet the expenses of a family y más si hay niños pequeños. more if there are little children As the fragment shows, Joy believed that well-being can be seen as a result of self- management and decision. In Joy’s interpretation, not having secure housing is a structural condition, and she did not make any reflection about how problematic that is for her. Her attitude to face this form of instability is that the situation is under her control. In that way, she links responsibility and well-being and makes it a controllable choice, a matter of discipline and will. In this interpretation, if someone suffers from material instability it is because they could not manage their expenses with responsibility, and therefore they are “depressed, sad, worried, and jittery.” Joy explained that she can avoid those feelings if she is vigilant about her expenses. In that way, she makes well-being something achievable in spite of structural conditions that act as barriers. Structural factors identified by participants as leading to well-being As a reminder, structural factors refer to broader social, economic, environmental and political conditions and institutions that influence people’s lives. For the girls in this study, the structural factors included (1) access to material resources and opportunities and material stability, (2) direct support networks, (3) institutional responses, and (4) safe community environment. Access to resources, opportunities, and material stability Most of the participants explained that having opportunities and resources are necessary conditions for their well-being. In that regard, they described access to education and professional opportunities as a key aspect. In addition, having a stable economic situation was also viewed as a requirement for well-being. Without it, girls and their families experience financial stress, and other consequences that are is highly detrimental to them. Thus, participants identified being able to contribute to family finances as a way to reduce stress and achieve well-being. 42 Educational opportunities Participants often referred to access to educational opportunities and professional development as affecting their well-being. In that sense, because all participants are from low- income families, their education access depends on their ability to get scholarships and students funds provided by the government. The Chilean system provides free tuition and economic support for low-income students with good academic standing, promoting their university access. The participants believe that through getting a scholarship, they can access any professional career they want and have the opportunity to economically support their families. For example, Kathy applied for a scholarship for indigenous students that supports her high school studies and would also cover her university expenses. Kathy knew that she needs to work hard at school to get and maintain a scholarship. For that reason, she was constantly vigilant about her grades: Fragment 7: Kathy STANZA 9 STANZA 9 K: Depende, ahora no tengo clases, K: It depends, now I don’t have class están en paro, pero lo normalmente, because of the teachers’ stroke, but normally cuando estamos en clases, when we are in class estoy los cinco días de clases, I’m five days in class y soy alguien que se preocupa mucho de sus notas, and I’m someone who is very worried about her grades y mis profesores lo saben. and my teachers know this O sea, yo me siento muy mal I mean, I feel really bad en mi estado de ánimo my mood cuando me saco por ejemplo un cuatro, o un cinco when I get a four, or a five I: Ya I; Ok 43 Fragment 7 (cont’d) K: Porque me interesa mucho lo del futuro. K: Because I’m really interested in the future. Por ejemplo, el tema de las becas, todo eso Like the scholarships and all that As the fragment above shows, Kathy recognized that she needs to maintain good grades and access scholarships to achieve well-being. On the contrary, not getting good grades gives her stress and anxiety. The phrase “I’m really interested in the future” suggests that she ties good grades with a good life in the future, demonstrating the importance she had given to this topic. Importantly, Kathy mentioned this at the very beginning of the interview (Stanza 9) as one of the first things that came to her mind when describing what contributes to well-being. For many girls, including Kathy, having a scholarship is also a way to diminish their families’ economic stress. Kathy explained that the family was willing to pay for her university. Still, they were also expecting her to get the scholarship so she could help: “my mom said: ‘if you want to go to the university, we would obviously support you, we would do our best to pay for it. But it would be better if you have a scholarship, so you can help us too’”. Similarly, Gema described wanting to access a scholarship to study wherever she wants and support her family as well: Fragment 8: Gema STANZA 58 STANZA 58 G: Ah, sí po, pero por los estudios yo digo, porque es G: Right. But I was talking about studying más difícil estudiar, porque, (opportunities), because is harder to (access to) studying, because… pero ahora ya está la gratuidad but now we have “gratuidad” I: ¿Y vas a estudiar? I: And are you going to study? G: Sí po, ahora quiero salir ya de cuarto, ir a estudiar G: I will. Now I want to finish the last year altiro, and go to the university right away 44 Fragment 8 (cont’d) estoy bien atrasada, voy a salir con 21 ahora de cuarto, I’m really late. I will end school at my 21. y no sé, ahí estoy, no se si ir a hacer un 2x1 no más, and I don’t know, I’m not sure if I should do a 2x1, and that’s it pero estoy viendo, porque ahí como que si me quedo a but I’m thinking about it, because if I stay estudio normal, in a normal school hay más posibilidades, no sé, por ejemplo hay una beca there are more possibilities of, I don’t igual, know, for example, there is a scholarship de que luego puedes estudiar donde quieras and then you can study wherever you want estoy intentando sacarla. I’m trying to get that one. In this fragment, Gema distinguished between “gratuidad” –i.e., a recent Chilean law that gives tuition-free access to higher education for students of low-income families– and scholarships. The first one opens the opportunity to access higher education and is more or less guaranteed to everyone who has entered a university. The second one requires more effort and better academic standing –noticeable in the phrase “I’m trying to get that one”– and would give her the possibility to study wherever she wants to. Importantly, Gema repeated a grade twice, which makes receiving the scholarship less likely and requires more effort. This was also the case for Kathy, who also repeated grades twice, and Carla, who repeated a grade and then dropped out of school. Jesse had good grades and studied in Aysén tuition-free and with scholarships that included food allowances. She used the tickets to buy food for her child, who lives in Cochrane with Jesse’s parents. Jesse and Joy highlighted the number of opportunities and benefits that are for people living in Coyhaique and believed it is a matter of knowledge and will to get them. For Jesse, however, those opportunities should not be for everyone but only for those who have made enough effort. 45 Fragment 9: Jesse STANZA 175 STANZA 175 Pero por ejemplo ya, no sé po, que sea algo más común, For example, I don’t know… it should be something more common 5.5 para arriba, todos pueden tener gratuidad, 5,5 minimum, and then everyone above that can have gratuidad para que sea algo igual accesible para todos, So it is accessible to everyone, pero igual que sea un mayor esfuerzo, But still requires an effort no se la pueden dar tampoco a cualquier persona, You cannot give that to everyone porque... igual yo considero en ese sentido, Because… I think that in that sense… muchos me dicen many people have told me "no, pero es que es egoísta tu pensar" “no, you are being selfish” yo considero que no, And I don’t think so porque igual todo vale un esfuerzo. Because everything is worth effort Jesse’s discourse is connected to individualism and effort to achieve well-being mentioned in the previous section. Jesse believes that access and opportunities to study will lead to well-being but that those conditions should not be available for everyone, only to those who have gained through personal merit. Girls see the scholarships as opportunities to freely choose their university and career. For low-income families, paying for their children to study in a university outside Coyhaique is nearly impossible. There is only one university in Aysén and two satellite campuses of other regional universities with a couple of career options in each. Thus, the program offer is very limited, and many students try to leave the region to follow their preferred career paths. The expenses are often too high for low-income families, making scholarships the only way to afford living in another 46 region. This puts a lot of pressure on girls, who need to have excellent grades and fare very well in the university admission tests to even apply for a scholarship. In line with the scarcity of educational opportunities, in the following fragment, Ivone explained that she has opted for not following a preferred career path to avoid the disappointment of not having access to it: Fragment 10: Ivone STANZA 22 STANZA 22 Pero me resigné por el tema de que según yo But I resigned because as I think about it si estudiaba algo así aparte de quizás no poder, if I studied something like that, besides that, I might not be able to do it por no tener todas las herramientas, because I don’t have all the means ya sea oportunidades, that is opportunities por no poder salir de la región lo que sea, because I can’t leave the region, or whatever it is me lleva a eso po, a la resignación, a decir it led me to this, to resignation, to say "ya, voy a estudiar artes, que es algo que me gusta y me “ok, I will study arts, that it’s something I love apasiona", and I’m passionate about.” siento que no voy a tener las oportunidades, I feel I won’t have any opportunities así que voy a estudiar algo que esté más a mi alcance, so I will study something that would be more within my reach o que me de campo laboral, dinero or that gives me a job, money In this fragment, Ivone reported believing that having opportunities, leaving the region, and having particular skills were things out of her control. On the other hand, resigning to her preferred career path was an option she was able to take, choosing something that was within her reach, as she 47 put it. Studying arts would give her the opportunity to follow what she is passionate about as a professional interest, which seems like something that would contribute to her well-being. However, Ivone deemed that professional path as too risky for several reasons. The fragment described the fear of aspiring to things out of her reach, like leaving the region, which would disappoint her and impede her well-being. She also feared professional failure, as she is not completely sure if she is talented enough to succeed as an artist. On the other hand, to study something that she does not like, but is within her reach and would give her security and stability, is a more attainable possibility of achieving a good life. Material stability For many participants, being able to contribute to the family’s material stability led to well- being. Participants commented that earning their own money and assuming financial responsibilities at home leads to positive affect and gives them a sense of possibility, achievement, and access to different things, as well as diminishing the financial stress of their families. When the participants assumed financial responsibilities, they showed financial independence and autonomy and were able to contribute with money to the household, which makes them feel proud and satisfied. Thus, for several participants, having a job or some sort of income made several positive impacts on their lives. In Carla’s case, for example, working allowed her to pay for her expenses, buy clothes and makeup, and contribute to the household. Carla shared living costs with her mom. She felt that having her own money and taking responsibilities in her household demonstrated she is autonomous and organized: “we kept a good organization with my mom. We pay the bills, pay for gas, buy clothes. It’s all good.” Carla valued this arrangement as it gave both of them material stability. In turn, material stability provided life satisfaction and peace of mind. Kathy also said that having her own income contributed to her well-being. She started selling candy at school to reciprocate the financial efforts that her parents made for her. She wanted to 48 contribute to the household by buying her own things and making presents for her family. Kathy believed that assuming financial responsibilities is a demonstration of maturity and autonomy and makes her feel proud. Different from other participants, Gema was trying to finish her high school education, which does not leave her enough time to have a job. The situation of Gema’s family was highly unstable, and she was worried about it: Fragment 11: Gema STANZA 59 STANZA 59 I: ¿Y por qué quieres trabajar? I: Why do you want to work? G: Para poder ayudar económicamente G: To be able to help economically I: ¿Te preocupa un poco la situación de la casa? I: Are you a bit worried about the situation of your home? G: Sí, igual G: Yes, kind of I: ¿Por qué? I: Why? G: O sea porque hace falta cosas, ya no es tanto, de G: I mean, because some things are comida no, lacking, is not food anymore, no, pero hace falta arreglar la casa y cosas así But things of the house that need to be fixed During the interview, Gema described several major repairs that need to be done in her house. The doors were broken, and the cold got in. The electrical installation was wrong, it went off often, and a fuse was missing. And also, the house got flooded during rains, which, combined with the poor electrical installation, can provoke a fire. Gema felt it was urgent to fix these things as she considered she and her family were in constant danger, which was stressful and did not contribute to her well-being. The phrase “is not food anymore, no, but things of the house that need to be fixed” illustrated 49 the severity of her home situation. These material conditions were directly related to her wish to start working as soon as possible, which was linked to Gema’s projection of plans for her future. In that sense, Gema believed that being able to work and support her family would diminish the financial stress and ultimately bring well-being to them and herself. In Joy’s case, having a job let her rent her own place for one year, living with independence and autonomy. Like Carla, Joy paid for her own expenses. She also saved money and planned for her future. Joy felt really satisfied with her ability to manage her finances and live by herself. She felt proud of her responsibility and maturity, which had positive effects on her well-being. Importantly, Joy decided to move against her father’s wishes. As she explained: “I told him one day, you know what? I want to move and live by myself. And he said, “but, why? You should leave when you get married,” and I was like, “no, I can leave whenever I want to.” In this quote, Latin American conservative values are apparent, which clashed with Joy’s wish of being materially independent. By moving out, Joy was contradicting traditional values and pre-established life paths that make women economically dependent on men. In that sense, girls that look for economic autonomy to achieve well-being were also challenging the traditional role system that makes them dependent on men. Similar to Joy, Jesse also pointed out that through working, she will gain autonomy and independence, which would let her raise her child in a stable and safe environment. Fragment 12: Jesse STANZA 49 STANZA 49 J: Y yo no estoy estudiando para darle un sueldo J: I’m not studying to give him [son] the mínimo, minimum wage yo quiero para mantenerlo, I want to maintain him ya si el día de mañana yo no llego a estar con mi pareja, If tomorrow I’m without a partner porque igual hay que ser realista, uno no siempre Because, one needs to be realistic, one won`t be 50 Fragment 12 (cont’d) va a estar toda la vida, with someone forever o quizás sí, eso uno nunca lo sabe, pero si estuviéramos Or maybe yes, you never know, if we were to genial. be together, great then. Pero igual si de repente yo termino con él, y yo digo But if we break, I say "ah, no, pero es que no estudio", “Oh, no. I didn’t have a degree.” ¿Qué pasa si después me quedo sin estudio? What would happen if I didn’t finish a degree? ¿Cómo voy a mantener yo a mi hijo? How am I going to pay for my child’s expenses? ¿Qué voy a estar toda la vida así? Am I going to live like that? Prefiero que no, prefiero tener un estudio, I prefer not to. I prefer to have a degree un cartón, y darle a mi hijo el bienestar también a él A title so I can give my son well-being as well According to this fragment, Jesse linked having a degree to a stable economic situation that would allow her to be independent of any partner in order to provide for her child. She is preparing for future uncertainty and doing what is within her reach to create a safe environment for her son, understanding and assuming that women are left in vulnerable positions when they don’t have financial autonomy. Therefore, Jesse believed that financial stability would lead to well-being. Direct support networks The participants valued being around people who accept them and make them feel they belong. This applied to both family and peers. Family support Regarding family, participants identified situations in which they felt accepted and unconditionally supported by their parents and other family members as leading to well-being. 51 In that line, Ivone described her relationship with her mother and sister as contributing to her well-being since they have open communication and are supportive of each other. As an example, Ivone talked about a situation in which she was kissing her girlfriend on the street, and her dad saw her and reacted violently, but when he told her mom, she supported the daughter, clarifying that Ivone could choose whoever she wanted as a partner. The following fragment described how Ivone feels about her supportive mom and sister: Fragment 13: Ivone STANZA 68 STANZA 68 I: Sí, de hecho, de comunicación I: Yes, in fact, about communication no puedo decir que sea muy buena con mi papá, I can’t say it is very good with my dad sólo con mi mamá, Only with my mom. pero me basta y me sobra con mi hermana y mi mamá, But with my mom and my sister I have more than enough o sea, siento todo el apoyo del mundo, I mean, they give me all the support in the world nunca me han tenido un prejuicio, they never hold a prejudice against me de hecho yo ni siquiera tuve un “salir del closet”, in fact, I never needed to “come out” fue como “oye, yo estoy conociéndola a ella”, y lo único it was like “I’m getting to know her” and that was it E: Como muy natural E: Very natural I: Sí, súper natural, I: Yes, very natural de hecho, eso se lo tengo que agradecer a mi mamá, I need to thank my mom for that porque no conozco a ninguna persona de su edad because I’ve never met anyone of her age creo que tenga como la mente tan abierta, as open minded as she is 52 Fragment 13 (cont’d) ni esa disposición a su hija de or with that attitude to her daughter “bueno, sea hombre o mujer, ay, que venga para la “Well, doesn’t matter if is a boy or a girl, invite casa” them home” o “cómo se llama, quién es”, Or “what’s her name? Who is she”? en ese sentido soy muy afortunada In that sense, I’m really lucky Ivone first described her family as supportive, and her example was about her being fully accepted having a girlfriend, showing the importance she conceded to this specific topic. Ivone’s phrase “I’ve never met anyone of her age as open-minded as she is, or with that attitude to her daughter” described her mother as an exception to the rule, an open-minded woman of her age, in a society marked by conservatism and homophobia, that would likely interfere in the relationships between mother and daughter. She felt treated with love and respect, encouraged to invite her partners over, and she believed that her mother and sister cared to know more about them. In this case, acceptance and support gave Ivone the confidence to make her own decisions and live her life with freedom. She can choose whoever she wants as her partner, knowing that she has a safety net of unconditional love backing her up. Ivone felt grateful and fortunate to have such a supportive mom and sister, highlighting her kind and loving attitude: “they give me all the support in the world.” Opposite to this attitude was Ivone’s father, who did not accept her bisexuality, rejecting her and feeling ashamed of his daughter. Ivone described this as negatively affecting her well-being. In her words, “[this is] one of my greatest sorrows (…) that he did not make me feel unconditionally accepted, considering I’m his daughter.” Similarly, Zeito tried to tell her mom that she liked girls and her mother said she did not believe her and that she was confused. This unsupportive attitude made Zeito cut her communication with her mom. She decided to lie about her life and started planning on leaving for Argentina and stopping seeing her and her family. Zeito does not trust her mom in case 53 something happens to her, does not ask for her help, and prefers not to spend time with her. As these examples show, lacking support leads to disconnection from the family network. Other participants said that they felt their parents would help them and do something if they needed to defend them. Participants described situations in which parents needed to talk with teachers or school authorities or act in cases of bullying. Some participants felt that their parents did not take their side, and that made them feel abandoned. For example, Gema said that her mom has never defended her or done anything when bad things have happened to her, which had diminished her confidence, particularly in social situations. She had been bullied at school and asked her mom to change her school, but she did not. Gema then stopped attending school, and her mother did not make her go. And when Gema’s neighbors were mean to her, she did not defend her. For these reasons, Gema felt abandoned. Others said that their parents were always on their side and described these situations as contributing to their well-being, as they feel safe and supported. For example, Kathy described her parents as very supportive. When she was bullied, they talked to the principal and, after seeing that this did not help her, switched her to another school. When Kathy wanted to start taking birth control, her mom made an appointment with two different doctors, paid for it, and bought her contraception. Because of these types of gestures, Kathy believed that her parents take her problems seriously and listen to her when she asks for help. They also invited her to follow her interests, celebrate her achievements, and offer material support for her to develop her talents. Tessa’s interview had abundant information regarding a music band she likes. When she described situations that she believed to contribute to her well-being, she talked about her parents, that made an enormous financial effort to go with her to Santiago for a concert of that band: “He went with me, left me there and waited until it finished. It was a great effort (…) when we got home, I cried with my dad because I was able to meet them.” Tessa described this day as when her dream came true. Besides Tessa’s 54 excitement, the quote illustrates a parent who cares, pays attention to her daughter’s interests, and supports her. Wanting to see a band is a good example of the type of interests that girls have and are trivialized by parents. In this case, instead of trivializing, her dad provided the material means for Tessa to go meet the band. These examples demonstrate that parents who do not trivialize or ignore girls in their interest and issues offer them relevant support. Importantly, it must be highlighted that this is not the norm, as girls are very often silenced and disregarded in their opinions, preferences, and problems (Eckert, 2014). In a different line, excessive parental expectations can be interpreted by girls as not being accepted and supported. Girls are under pressure to behave in certain ways and achieve certain things, sometimes against their wishes and preferences. As an example of excessive parental expectations, Antonia explained that her mother had excessive expectations of her, as the following fragment shows: Fragment 14: Antonia STANZA 74 STANZA 74 A: Cuando a veces tienen mucha expectativa de mí, A: When they have too many expectations on me y a mí no me gusta, porque yo sé que a veces igual and I don’t like it because I know that cometo errores, sometimes I make mistakes as well o sea igual puedo decepcionar y cosas asi pero es como I mean, I can disappoint and things like that but is like “No, la Antonia no” Yo tampoco soy perfecta, pero no “No, Antonia won’t” I’m not perfect, but I sé don’t know I: ¿Alguna vez alguien te dijo algo I: Have someone said something 55 Fragment 14 (cont’d) que te hizo sentir así? that made you feel that way? A: Es que a veces mi mamá A: Sometimes my mom o cosas así siempre es como muy buena, or things like that, always like she is too good y yo le dije una vez and one day I said to her “pero no siempre voy a tener buenas notas” y me dijo “but I won’t have good grades always” and she said “pero es que tu no puedes bajar tus notas” “but it’s just, you can’t lower your grades” Antonia believed that her mom’s expectations were so high that she was not even able to make mistakes. She felt she needed to be perfect all the time or would become a disappointment for her mom. As Antonia explained it, her mom has an attitude that denies the possibility of failure, which seems to smother her. This fragment shows how roles and social expectations imposed by Antonia’s mom were a burden. She jumped from needing to have good grades to needing to be perfect, which seems exaggerated and unattainable. She knew she would fail at something eventually, and her mother’s attitude suggests that she will not accept her if that happens, which created stress and pressure for Antonia, who gave high importance to her mother’s opinion. Jesse’s family, on the other hand, offered critical support and allowed her to study. As a young mother, Jesse asked her parents to take care of her baby in another city while she finished her degree in mechanics in Coyhaique. Although it was painful not to be living with her baby, Jesse made that decision thinking that she would be able to offer the baby a better life. Jesse highlighted her family support as fundamental for her well-being. She also described being largely criticized by other people outside her family. Fragment 15: Jesse STANZA 48 STANZA 48 56 Fragment 15 (cont’d) I: Y esto, que tuviste que dejar a tu hijo allá para que I: And about leaving your kid there so you can pudieras estudiar, study ¿Cómo lo ves tú? ¿Contribuye a tu bienestar? How do you see that? Did it contribute to your well-being? J: Sí J: Yes I: Ya I: Ok J: Porque uno estudia tranquila, J: Because I can study in peace todos me dicen "ay, que eres mala" y yo les digo "no". Everyone tells me, “You’re so mean,” and I answer “no.” Mucha gente, mucha, eso sí, mucha gente me ha dicho Many people, many. Actually, many people have told me "cómo vas a dejar a tu hijo, que los hijos se van a crecer “How would you leave your son? [when] kids con los abuelos, grow up with their grandparents que los abuelos se van a querer, They love their grandparents que después el niño no va a querer estar contigo, que tú And the kid won’t want to be with you no vas a ser su mamá" anymore. You won’t be her mom anymore.” Y yo les digo "no". And I say “no” Yo siempre me he enfocado, I have always been focused en que, si yo termino pronto, If I finish fast me va bien, es decir que mi hijo lo más pronto lo voy a I will have a good future, which means being tener with my son sooner. As this fragment shows, Jesse deemed having a good life as finishing her degree and being reunited with her son. She believes that with a degree, she will be able to offer him a better future. 57 What leads to well-being, in this case, is to work hard and be focused on her studies, so she can achieve her life goals. This can only be achieved with the help of her supportive family. The fragment also shows Jesse needed to give explanations and justify her decision to other people, as many made negative comments about her role as a mother and her future relationship with her son. On the contrary, her parents were unconditionally supportive. As she explained “sometimes [boyfriend] does not have money, and my parents are always like “it doesn’t matter, don’t worry, we [cover it], then you can pay us back. My parents are like… they care, and try to make sure no one is lacking anything.” Participants also care about the support and opinions of other family members. For example, Tessa commented that she once decided to speak up when her grandfather was saying something that was bothering her. She did that knowing that others would believe that it was not her place to do that. Since Tessa was challenging societal norms, she was risking being scolded and ashamed. The fragment below describes the situation: Fragment 16: Tessa STANZA 62 STANZA 62 T: Y yo escuché y me enojé, T: I heard that, and I got upset y estábamos comiendo, and we were having dinner y le dije súper respetuosa sí and I told him, but very respectfully que no me había gustado el comentario, that I didn’t like the comment que no lo haga, le dije por qué no debería hacerlo, and that he shouldn’t do it. I told him why he shouldn’t do it y empezó a cambiar de tema, y me dio rabia, y me fui. and he started to change the subject, and I got angry and left, Y después lo empezó a contar, and then he started talking about it y quedó muy para adentro, and he was astonished 58 Fragment 16 (cont’d) porque le sorprendió que yo le parara los carros, because he was surprised that I was stopping him por decirlo así as a way to say it In this fragment, it is implied that Tessa recognized her place in the family as having less authority than her grandfather. This is based on community cultural values that determine gender and age social hierarchy. Since she was acting against social expectations, Tessa needed to strategize to challenge her grandfather without being silenced. This approach is noticeable in the phrase, “and I told him, but very respectfully,” which points out that Tessa used respectful manners to appeal for civilized behavior. After not being treated with enough respect, she left in anger. That reaction gave her argument strength. Instead of being upset, the grandfather was impressed and gave her recognition for her attitude. After this happened, both grandparents changed their relationship with Tessa, calling her more and showing more affection. Since the consequences were so positive, Tessa started expressing herself with more confidence and demanding to be treated as a valuable member of the family. Peers’ support Having friends and belonging to a group of peers is highlighted by several participants as important contributors to well-being. Zeito narrated many situations that contributed to her well- being that were related to her group of peers. For example, she has a disease, and sometimes the sunlight may hurt her. Her friends knew this and stayed with her inside the classroom during breaks, so she did not stay alone. This makes the disease much more bearable as it does not affect her social 59 life as much. Her friends were also very supportive of her sexual preferences and her gender identity1 as well. Regarding the possibility of transitioning, she said: Fragment 17: Zeito STANZA 278 STANZA 278 I: has pensado en ser trans también I: you are thinking about transitioning Z: Sí Z: yes I: ¿Y que vas a hacer? I: What are you planning? Z: Es que siempre me he reconocido como hombre Z: It’s just I have always recognized myself as a man y nunca como mujer, And never as a woman y mis amigos siempre me avalan eso And my friends have always supported that Importantly, Zeito’s mom seemed very conservative and did not know she wants to transition. Zeito planned on doing this process in Argentina when she turns 18, without discussing it with her parents. On the contrary, Zeito had looked for support from her friends, who have helped her to choose a new name and have celebrated her decision. They have been helpful and respectful, and since then, Zeito has trusted them with all her problems and worries. They have also defended her in cases of transphobic and homophobic attacks, which are common in Coyhaique. For Zeito, her group of friends have provided an environment of safety and care that leads to well-being. Participants also value when peers are supportive when they are sad, worried, or sick. For example, Tessa was hospitalized for kidney failure and missed school for several days. One friend went to see her in the hospital. Tessa saw this gesture as a sign of true friendship. The visit made 1 I used she/her pronouns because Zeito used those pronouns to refer to herself during the whole interview, and also chose to participate in a study for girls. 60 them close, and now they share interests and can talk about everything they care about, telling each other secrets and organizing their thoughts when they are confused or sad. Different from other participants, Gema had not found a group of friends who support her. That had made her environment unsafe and uncomfortable, impeding her well-being. During her childhood, Gema felt isolated by all her peers based on her physical appearance. She did not have any friends and was ignored and harmed by her classmates and neighbors of her age. Some of them insulted her, stole things from her, and made fun of her looks. Gema called these “toxic relationships” that acted as a major barrier to her well-being, affecting her general experience at school and neighborhood, to the point that she would not feel comfortable anywhere, as the following fragment describes: Fragment 18: Gema STANZA 25 STANZA 25 I: Y en el fondo qué crees tú que te llevó a tener esta I: and what do you think led you to this situación, situation ¿Era algo que era sólo de la casa, o sólo del colegio, era It was something that only happened at home? de todo? Or at school? Or was it everywhere? G: O sea fue porque, yo creo que por lo mismo G: I mean, it was because of the same thing que las relaciones sociales que tenía, Of social relationships that I had que no me sentía cómoda en ningún lado Because I couldn’t feel comfortable anywhere I: En ninguna parte I: Nowhere G: No G: No As a consequence of these relationships, Gema could not find herself comfortable in any context, making her daily life difficult. This ended up triggering a depression that also affected her trajectory at school. As the literature has stated, bullying is also a gendered practice, in which girls 61 are more likely to engage in bullying against girls based on their physical appearance (McClanahan et al., 2015). As Gema’s case illustrated, having a positive peer environment is a critical condition for girls’ well-being. Joy also described having unsupportive peers. Joy’s mom died in unclear circumstances, and the incident was publicly commented on, so everyone around Joy knew it and made several assumptions. They gossiped about her and her mom, which was damaging to her healing process. More details about this case can be found in Joy’s memo. In her words: Fragment 19: Joy STANZA 80 STANZA 80 tú estás tratando de sanarte, de sanar You are trying to heal yourself, to heal pero la gente con sus comentarios But people with their comments te hace retroceder un montón. Knock you backwards. A lot. yo me levantaba todos los días I woke up everyday hoy día así hoy día tengo esto. I have this today, I have this yo estaba en muchos talleres I was in so many activities decía hoy día voy a esta parte And I was like “today I have to go to this” a esta parte a esta parte To this, to this STANZA 81 STANZA 81 me decían “oye cómo estái tú”, And they were like “how are you?” O yo decían “yo vivo con mi abuela” “y tu mamá”, Or I say “I live with my grandma” “and your mom? “No mi mamá no está”, “y porque no está”, “no, my mom is not here” “why she isn’t here?” “no porque no está” “because she is not” 62 Fragment 19 (cont’d) y alguien le decía al oído la otra persona And they would whisper in their ear no es que su mamá murió. “no, is that her mom died” es la que encontraron en el río “she is the one that was found on the river” entonces todo mi trabajo del día… So all my work of the day… The fragment shows that Joy was constantly reminded of her mom’s death. People around her did not respect her wishes of not talking about her mom and insisted on inappropriate questions and reactions. As she described it, “people with their comments knock you backward. A lot” which denotes that poor peer’s reactions were detrimental to her process. Joy also described trying to be motivated and do things, but these comments depressed her, ruining her progress. In Joy’s case, leaving the city was the only solution to gain control over how others see her. Joy moved to Coyhaique, where no one knew anything about her past. She decided to lie about her personal story, focusing on the good things and finding ways to highlight things she found valuable about herself. This new opportunity was key for her healing process, as she was not set back by anyone. Similar to Joy, Tessa interpreted her change of school as a fresh start. It was an opportunity for her to define who she was and what she wanted to change. In addition to controlling her own narrative, Tessa challenged the idea of personality traits as fixed conditions. For Tessa, the fresh start was an opportunity to develop a more extroverted personality in front of peers. Fragment 20: Tessa STANZA 14 STANZA 14 T: Cuando entré a mi liceo, T: when I started high school fue harto cambio para mí, It was a big change for me porque yo en mi otro colegio Because in my other school 63 Fragment 20 (cont’d) era mucho más retraída, I was much more introspective y no opinaba mucho, acerca del curso, I didn’t give my opinions much, regarding class y cuando entré al liceo pensé que podía cambiar eso, And when I started high school, I thought I was able to change that porque a mí no me gustaba cómo era, because I didn’t like who I was y ahí como nadie se conocía el primer día, and because none knew each other on the first day era bacán, porque era como empezar todo de nuevo, it was great, it was like starting all over again y empecé a ser de otra forma, and I start being a different person y mis compañeros son muy buenos, and my classmates are so good o sea ahora, que estoy más grande I mean, now that I’m older y puedo salir, y cosas así, mis compañeros and I can go out and things like that, with my classmates no son de esos así como ya, they are not like "si no tomai, eris fome" no, “you don’t drink, you are boring,” no son muy respetuosos, cosas así they are so respectful, things like that At the end of the fragment, Tessa commented on how her classmates’ attitudes created an environment that is safe and respectful. With this comment, Tessa highlighted that girls need peers that allow them to change without imposing their preconceived views of how they should be or behave. Institutional responses Girls discussed schools more frequently than other institutions, but they also included others -such as their workplace, or the local police– as institutions that were affecting their well-being. 64 Some participants talked about schools that do not let them develop their interests or express themselves. If the schools were too strict, they felt suffocated and treated unjustly. Joy was expelled from several schools because she would try to bend the uniform rules. She referred to these schools as being too authoritarian and oppressive. Ivone also was frustrated with her high school. The principal called her dad several times to accuse her of not following the uniform rules, and she felt constantly harassed by the school administrators. She eventually switched schools to one that was less strict. In Ivone’s words, the new school was “more informal,” where all the relationships were less formal, and the teachers were supportive of students’ interests. In that regard, Ivone highlighted the teachers, including the one that invited her to the interview: Fragment 21: Ivone STANZA 13 STANZA 13 I: Yo creo que la presencia de profes ahí mismo. I: I think the presence of teachers right there Por ejemplo la profe que me vino a dejar ahora, Like the teacher that came with me to [to this interview] porque valoran cosas que por ejemplo en otros liceos They value things that, for example, in other high schools no me han valorado, Won’t value of me que son cosas no tan directamente de lo académico, Things that are not directly related to academic [things] de los números y datos, Numbers or data sino que más que nada tal vez lo artístico, But artistic things, mostly u otras capacidades que yo tengo Or other capabilities I do have y que me gusta que sean reconocidas, And that I like are recognized entonces por ejemplo ahora mismo Like, for example right now 65 Fragment 21 (cont’d) con la invitación a la entrevista The invitation to the interview sé que la profe vio algo más en mí I know that the teacher saw something more in me para invitarme a participar en esto To invite me to participate in this The fragment is centered in the act of recognition, as a supportive attitude that leads to well- being. In this fragment, Ivone described how teachers at the new school appreciated her talents and her features. While teachers at the first school were only worried about classes and faring well in tests, the teachers at the new school valued her for other things related to her artistic side or her overall intelligence. As the phrase “I know that the teacher saw something more in me” expresses, those things that are appreciated and given recognition were not necessarily identified by Ivone herself. In that sense, being recognized by others also helped her to value herself. Jesse also found support in her educational institution. She was one of very few female students in mechanical engineering. She was expecting that teachers and students would discriminate against her for choosing a male-dominated field. On the contrary, she was treated with respect, and her difference was recognized as valuable. Jesse commented about her teachers that they were proud of her and that they liked how she works and who she is because she is always “organized and focused on studies.” Similar to Ivone, Jesse felt recognized in her institution, and that made her feel proud, validated, and satisfied with her performance. She also described that the institution supports all the students, helping them to succeed. Jesse connected the supportive environment directly with achieving well-being, as the following fragment shows: Fragment 22: Jesse STANZA 135 STANZA 135 66 Fragment 22 (cont’d) I: Eso te importa a ti, que exista eso I: And you care about that. That you have [assistance] J: Sí, es muy importante, J: Yes, it is really important y yo creo que para todos en general es muy importante, I think for everyone, in general, it is really important que haya buena asistencia, That we have good assistance que haya una persona que esté preocupada de todo, That there is a person caring about everything es importante, porque sienten mayor confort, y mayor, It is really important because we feel more comfortable, and more… no sé bien, ahí entramos a la palabra que nos tocó, I don’t know… here we go with the word we bienestar, talked about, well-being también, porque uno no va a estar conforme You will not be satisfied ni en un bien estar cuando hay mala relación con las Or will have well-being when you have poor personas, relationships with others no es un lugar agradable, entonces… That won’t make a nice environment, so… Jesse believed that studying in a positive environment, where people feel supported and cared for by the institutions, is key for well-being. With “good assistance,” Jesse was referring to institutional staff that “care about everything.” This means personnel that follow-up on students’ cases so they can give them the support they need to study and finish their degrees. Jesse interpreted this support as a way to create a nice and satisfying environment that backs them up to study and be comfortable. In her words, having a good interpersonal relationship with the people in the institution and having a positive overall environment led to well-being. In addition, Jesse highlights 67 the importance of having teachers that won’t discriminate against her for being a woman working in mechanics. She mentioned: “I really appreciate not having machista teachers, because otherwise, it would’ve been so hard. But it was the opposite.” Antonia also highlighted having a positive institutional environment where people care about them and help them when they are in need. Antonia is part of Youth Orchestra, a Chilean program that offers free music education to young people from low-income families. Antonia valued the program because of a supportive teacher who always shows interest in what is going on with her: Fragment 23: Antonia STANZA 64 STANZA 64 A: Lo que me gusta más sí es la orquesta A: What I like the most is the orchestra I: ¿Por qué? I: Why? A: Es que creo que es porque desde que empecé A: Because since I started siempre me ha gustado trabajar con mi profe, I always like my teacher me divierte, me distrae estar ahí It amuses me. To be there distracts me I: ¿Qué onda el profe o la profe? ¿Cómo enseña? I: What is it about the teacher? How does she ¿Quién es? ¿Cómo es? teach? Who is it? How is she? A: La profe, no sé, la profe nos conoce A: The teacher, I I know. The teacher knows us y lo sé porque a veces nos ve la cara no más y And I know that because sometimes she only looks at our faces and “Qué pasa”, “Por qué estas así” “what is it” “why are you like that.” I: ¿Ah sí? Los cacha altiro I: Oh really? She gets you right away A: Sí. La quiero mucho A: Yes. I love her so much. The stanza starts with a phrase, “What I like the most is the orchestra.” Antonia said this to talk about what things of her life she thinks contributed to her well-being. As the fragment shows, the 68 orchestra distracted her from her problems and worries. She also highlighted the teacher, who was active in supporting students. She observed them, looked for signs of distress, asked them how they feel, and offered them help. The phrase “she only looks at our face and” demonstrates that the teacher was able to easily recognize if something went wrong with one of her students. At the end of the stanza, Antonia described the affective bond between her and the teacher, explaining that she had helped her when she had needed her. Although the fragment talks about the relationship of the teacher with all her students, the last phrase suggests that the teacher had been noticing when things went wrong with her in particular. Later in the interview, Antonia described situations in which the teacher recognized she was having problems at home and offered help. Antonia valued this gesture. In this case, what leads to well-being is to count on safe spaces and attentive adults that would allow girls to cope with their problems. In contrast, unsupportive institutions are challenging environments to the participants. Illustrating an institutional environment that does not lead to well-being, Joy commented on a harmful situation in her job. She was in her office, and her boss made an inappropriate joke about her sexual life. The joke offended her deeply. Instead of laughing, she told him that the comment was inappropriate, and he should not say things like that again. She explained the situation as follows: “he told me, ‘what do you know about anything? How old are you? (…) you are just a girl. And I stand up, and I’m taller than him, and staring from above, I told him because people like you, this society does not change.” Then she continued her speech, told him that what he did constituted work harassment, and that if the situation was reversed, she would likely be fired. After that, the boss never said anything like that again. In that sense, Joy was proud of her ability to manage the situation. She was clear and assertive, and successfully used her stature to challenge her boss. However, she also recognized the gender and age hierarchy present in her workplace, in which these types of damaging situations are grounded. 69 Joy also referred to the problem persisting for others, as other workmates have suffered sexism. She talked about one woman of almost 50 years who was constantly teased by other workers. Joy had tried to tell her not to laugh and to say something, but she refused because she does not want to lose her job. As a result, Joy interpreted her work environment as toxic, machista, and unsafe. Jesse also commented that some institutions created unsafe environments. In her case, her uncle sent her pornographic pictures and tried to make sexual advances to her. She went to the police and did not get any help. She reacted with frustration and rage. About the police’s lack of action, she said, “Are they going to wait for me to be dead to do something?” In this context, Jesse commented that her cousin was killed by her ex-boyfriend. The police were aware of the ex- boyfriend’s threats but did not protect Jesse’s cousin. Jesse compared both situations –hers and her cousin– concluding that the police have been negligent and that it is harder for women and girls to achieve justice and protection. Safe community environment For many participants, it was fundamental to count on supportive communities that would protect them from violence and injustice. Girls in Coyhaique are particularly vulnerable to different forms of sexual violence, and many participants have faced that themselves. Sadly, they often do not feel their communities react appropriately when violence happens. In addition, the participants have also seen how gender-based violence affects people they know, directly or indirectly. The participants evaluated the reactions to crimes and aggressions to women as insufficient. Ivone gave particular importance to this topic. Like many other participants, she was harassed on the street. She was with a friend who did not want to respond to the men that harassed her. Ivone was very frustrated that she could not defend herself from the violence. She also 70 explained that people in Coyhaique blame women when they are attacked. For example, about a horrible crime against one woman in Coyhaique, Ivone commented: Fragment 24: Ivone STANZA 89 STANZA 89 pero recuerdo una vez cuando pasó esto de Nabila But I remember a time when that thing with Rifo. Nabila Rifo happened. Se decía mucho de parte de gente que por poco hay que, And people used to say that almost… se supone que ella ejercía la prostitución creo, It seems that she worked in prostitution, I guess o se decía algo así, or at least that’s what it was said entonces la gente justificaba el hecho so, people justified the fact de que le hayan hecho tal atrocidad that someone made her something that horrible porque era prostituta, o sea que se lo andaba because she was a prostitute like she was looking buscando, for it y recuerdo una vez que una amiga dijo algo así como and I remember that one day a friend said something like “ya, pero igual era prostituta”, “Ok, but she was a prostitute.” Y yo altiro salí a defender la situación, and I reacted immediately y decir que independiente de lo que sea una persona, I said that there is no relationship between someone’s occupation y eso ni siquiera es como que sea su culpa o… which is not something that you can blame her for una decisión de ella propiamente, or say that it was a properly made decision que se defienda tal atrocidad con eso to say that such horror can be defended with that argument 71 Fragment 24 (cont’d) o sea nadie se merece que le saquen los ojos I mean, no one deserves someone takes away your eyes o que te traten tan mal por lo que haces or being mistreated for what you do As the fragment shows, the community reactions affected Ivone’s relationships with her peers and made her feel she does not fit in. She felt misunderstood and discouraged that no one else was seeing the problems related to blaming the victim of a terrible crime. Ahmed (2017) described these feelings as common among feminists, as they are often isolated, mistreated, and have a feeling of swimming against the current. Although peer acceptance is critical for adolescents’ well-being (Avedissian & Alayan, 2021), in this case, there is an ideological barrier that does not let Ivone fit in within a community culture that she deems as unfair and violent. In addition, living in a community that blames victims creates an unsafe space for girls, impeding their well-being. In that line, some of the participants suffered sexual aggression, and when they looked for help, they did not get support. For example, Carla was taking driving lessons, and the teacher tried to kiss her and touch her. After this happened, Carla was showing clear signs of trauma, and her boss advised her to go to the police, but the police did not do anything, and she stopped attending her driving class. Carla clarified that she was not to blame for the attack. To explain it, she said: “I’m a calm person, not like those crazy girls that flirt with old guys.” Importantly, Carla seems to believe that some women may deserve to be blamed when they have been attacked, demonstrating internalized oppression. She normalized that some events happen to girls that do not behave as they should be. A similar statement was made by Kathy, who was raped by her boyfriend but did not seek help because she believed she partially deserved it for provoking the situation. However, in Carla’s case, she did not think she did anything wrong, which gave her a feeling of 72 chaos and injustice, increasing her fear and sense of vulnerability. Carla’s reaction was to stop going out and be hypervigilant regarding men. Joy lived an analogous situation. She was on the street, and a male stranger intentionally touched her buttocks. Joy described her outfit in detail when describing what happened, explaining to me that she was not wearing any provocative clothes. She then described spending time thinking what may have motivated the attack, but she could not think of any explanation. As a response of this situation, she opted to stop cleaning herself, thinking that she would be able to avoid future attacks. “I questioned myself, a lot (…) normal things like cleaning my ears, I stopped doing that because I thought, if someone sees me with unclean ears, they will move away. Or maybe if I don’t brush my teeth, they will take distance.” She was worried about projecting an image that would make people think it was ok to make advances on her, so she tried to control how she showed up in front of others, looking for ways to make them go away. As these examples illustrate, the girls make efforts to defend themselves in an unsafe environment. They look for forms of controlling the threats and avoid being in danger, which limits their lives in important ways. Both Carla and Joy became hypervigilant and feared that they might be attacked again anytime. Jesse also felt that the community environment was unsafe for her. In her case, she felt vulnerable as a young woman occupying a lower-level position in the community’s social hierarchy. She felt at high risk for being attacked and feared the reaction of the community would be unsupportive. Referring to her uncle’s sexual advances, she commented: Fragment 25: Jesse STANZA 39 STANZA 39 Pero en ese sentido si los carabineros, But in that sense, yes, the police pucha uno decía igual, uno se decepciona de la ley de well, one would say, one can be disappointed of Chile, Chilean law 73 Fragment 25 (cont’d) de todo, porque igual la denuncia lleva dos años, of everything because the accusation has two years now ¿Qué pasa si me hubiera atacado embarazada? What if he would attack me while I was pregnant? que hubiera pasado y todo. What would happen, and everything "No, es que él es una buena persona" “No, he is a good person” porque ya la tienen en nombre destacado porque canta, Because they have him as a remarkable name, because he sings en los rodeos, en los festivales, On rodeos, and fests es una persona súper intachable, He is blameless nadie podría pensar mal de él No one would think bad of him STANZA 40 STANZA 40 I: Qué lata I: I’m sorry J: Entonces, ¿A quién le van a creer? J: So, who are they going to believe to? ¿A la niñita embarazada que se quedó embarazada The pregnant girl who got pregnant while young joven por joder? just for fun? ¿O al hombre intachable? Que la mayoría de la gente Or the blameless men? Everyone is going to le va a creer a él believe him I: Sí I: Yeah J: Yo le puedo contar mi historia y me van a decir J: I can tell my story, and they would say "no, la cabrita no sé, suelta" “no, I don’t know, the wild girl.” "la cabrita joven, que quedó embarazada, que andaba “the young girl, that got pregnant, that was hinchando" troubling” 74 Fragment 25 (cont’d) "que andaba provocando" “that was provoking” In this fragment, Jesse compared her position and her uncle’s and exposed that hers, as a young woman and as a teenage mom, implied that she would have less access to justice and would be less likely supported by the community. It shows how she perceived being seen by the community as a pregnant teenager, which she connected to being unreliable and problematic. In contrast, she believed that her uncle was perceived as a good member of the community, who seems to have a more important role in the community than she does. Thus, Jesse anticipated that the community reaction would be supporting her uncle instead of her. She also anticipated that no one would believe her because she got pregnant, which, Jesse imagined, would automatically be perceived by the community as if she was a “wild girl” or “troubling”. Jesse’s fragment described an unsafe environment that excludes her and does not protect her from aggressions. Jesse reacted to this environment with frustration and rage and did not believe the structure was capable of change. Summary of findings As expected, the participants spoke about individual-level and structural-level factors that lead to well-being. They talked about well-being as being comfortable and happy, and described how social and material conditions need to be in place to achieve it. Participants identified optimism as a key individual-level aspect for well-being attainment. Optimism is defined as having a positive attitude and expecting that they would be able to reach their goals and have a good life overall. They also mentioned resilience and strength as the ability to face and overcome life adversity. A third individual-level feature described was extraversion, which refers to being outgoing in social situations, an aspect that is explicitly tied to well-being. Girls also 75 pointed out that being individualistic and determined was favorable to their well-being, which entails being responsible and putting effort into achieving the things that they want. The structural factors were divided into three components. The participants believed that having access to educational opportunities and professional development was fundamental to achieving material stability in the future. This material stability was considered a condition for well- being. Support networks (family and peers) as well as institutional responses were also mentioned as structural-level factors relating to well-being. The final structural-level factor pertained to living in a safe community environment. Since the participants face several threats in their environment, they valued having communities that would protect them and have appropriate reactions to violence and injustice. 76 DISCUSSION Results showed that, when asked about their definitions of well-being, all the participants gave responses related to psychological approaches to well-being, emphasizing positive affect and happiness. In addition, some participants expanded on their psychological well-being definition to include objective indicators needed to ensure a good life. Both approaches –those that highlight intrapersonal elements to define well-being and those focused on the objective conditions that lead to it– are prevalent in psychology and well-being studies (Ross et al., 2020) and have likely influenced participants’ definitions of well-being. Although there is still limited information regarding how adolescent girls have conceptualized well-being, these results suggest that participants have largely internalized the dominant discourses on well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine how the participants described their well-being. As expected, they brought up individual factors aligned with the psychological discourses of well- being and also described structural level factors that are gendered and amenable to social change. Regarding individual-level factors, girls’ opinions on optimism, resilience, and extraversion as leading to well-being align well with the evidence in the field that has shown strong correlations between those individual features and higher levels of well-being. Studies have shown that optimistic people tend to have better coping mechanisms to deal with adversity (Daukantaite & Bergman, 2005). Resilience is described as a personal trait that helps individuals to recover more quickly from stressful or harmful events and promotes adaptation to the environment, improving psychological well-being (Sagone & Caroli, 2014). And extraversion –treated as a personality trait that people either have or do not– appears as strongly correlated with higher levels of psychological well-being (Sagone & Caroli, 2014) and subjective well-being (Cummins, 2010). Participants recognized optimism and resilience as coping mechanisms to face adversity and saw them as traits that can be developed. In the case of optimism, studies have also shown that, 77 among girls, optimism predicts peer acceptance (Oberle et al., 2010), which could be a reason for girls to act optimistic as a socially desirable attitude –e.g., Gema described herself as appearing as the “typical happy girl” in front of others–. Similar to optimism, the participants also saw resilience and strength as strategies to cope with challenges and improve levels of subjective well-being. Interestingly, Sagone & Caroli (2014) showed that resilience does not depend only on one’s psychology since social context plays an important role in its development. According to these authors, contexts that are supportive and invite adolescents to flourish and have a positive self- image are beneficial to growing resilience. In the case of girls, these types of contexts are less frequent, and therefore, would explain lower levels of resilience among girls in that study (Sagone & Caroli, 2014). Regarding extraversion, although widely present in well-being literature as a personality trait, less has been written about the contextual factors that may hinder or facilitate the expression of that trait. The results of this study show that there are gender and cultural factors that affect girls’ expressions of their personalities. In Latin American society, girls are expected to be shy and quiet, avoiding attracting attention. Girls that step out of this behavior are likely to be reprimanded or mistreated. This can be summarized in the well-known phrase “calladita te ves más bonita” –“you look prettier when quiet” – that represents the cultural connection between femininity, beauty, and expected social behavior. In that sense, the idea that extroversion is something people have or not is arguable, as it may be the case that girls in Latin America are likely to be discouraged from extraverted behaviors and invited to act as introverted. In a different line, participants of this study described individualism and determination as important individual-level factors that lead to well-being. Importantly, the results showed that girls used this discourse to feel like they were in control of their circumstances, understanding well-being as a result of behaviors such as discipline, self-management, and responsibility, among others. As 78 some authors have proposed, these ideas –widespread in capitalist societies– foster the misconception of agency based uniquely on individual thoughts and intentions, refusing to acknowledge that there are structural, political, cultural, and material limits in the individual ability to pursue one’s own well-being (Gunn & Cloud, 2010). This study also shows that discourses focused on individual-level factors towards well-being promote positive affect, but in doing that, they also can conceal important structural problems and inequalities that act as critical barriers to girls’ well-being. When placing the responsibility of well- being solely on internal psychological factors, girls may believe that they are to blame if they don’t experience the desired levels of well-being. Importantly, the individual traits described by the participants tended to be also related to the environment, which determines if they are developed or not, and to what extent. In addition, it is also important to consider that sometimes girls can cover their own needs and problems to show themselves as positive and optimistic in front of others or rely upon their ability to be strong to face problems without adequate support and help. Structural level factors In addition to the individual-level factors, the results showed that participants included in their discourses structural factors that they believe lead to well-being. Girls talked profusely about education as a gate to promising future well-being. Access to education and opportunities are considered by girls as guaranteeing material stability, which they perceived to be a necessary condition for well-being. As a structural condition, access to education affects girls and boys differently. As explained earlier, the limited offer to academic programs implies that students need to leave the region to study. In that regard, some Chilean studies have shown girls living in isolated areas are less likely to leave their families to follow university studies (Pareja Pineda et al., 2021). Girls’ mobility depends on income and gender roles since the cultural expectation of women assuming social reproduction tasks (Laslett & Brenner, 1989) limits the opportunities of those girls 79 that need to take care of family members (Pareja Pineda et al., 2021). Therefore, although having access to education is considered key to well-being, girls of this study have their opportunities constrained by gender roles that make it harder for them to leave the region. In the same vein, in Latin American countries, it is more likely that underaged girls assume the care of family members (Estupiñán Aponte, 2014) and it is also the case of the participants of this study since at least Antonia, Gema, Jesse, Kathy, and Carla started taking care of relatives before they were 18 years old. Besides determining girls’ mobility, material instability and gender roles are important factors that contribute to the intergenerational feminization of poverty. In that regard, there is evidence that in Chile, women are more likely than men to be poor (Ministerio de la Mujer y la Equidad de Género, 2019), and that is due to three main reasons: they are less likely to access education, more likely to face violence, and are more likely to be responsible for domestic work, including taking care of children and family members (Baeza Leiva, 2015). The results also showed that the participants were aware of their families’ financial stress and found satisfaction in helping their parents and contributing to the household economy. According to Main (2017), children and adolescents of low-income families increase their subjective well-being when they are appropriately involved in the financial situation of the family. Over- or under- involvement in the family discussions about economic matters have detrimental impacts on their subjective well-being, augmenting children and adolescents’ financial stress and sometimes making them conceal their needs to avoid worrying their parents. Participants of this study showed different levels of involvement, being positively and negatively impacted by their sense of responsibility to the family’s economy. As the literature and these results show, it would be beneficial for adolescents’ well-being to be at least partially shielded from poverty-related stress, which would let them choose their career path more freely and diminish their anxiety about the future. In addition, it needs to be recognized that despite all of the girls coming from low-income families, there were important 80 differences between the level of resources that each girl had, and the opportunities that resources impacted. Following an intersectional approach, it is critical to understand the heterogeneity and acknowledge the diversity within groups that are usually considered homogeneous in research (Buchanan & Wiklund, 2021). It needs to be considered that some of the participants seemed satisfied and comfortable with their levels of involvement in the economic issues of the family. The study mentioned above described that being appropriately involved in economic family issues and higher levels of subjective well-being were related to a perception of fair treatment within the family (Main, 2017). In that sense, the results of this dissertation are clearly pointing out that girls concede critical importance to feeling treated with fairness and respect and being able to demonstrate that they are not as they are generally depicted –irresponsible, irrational, frivolous, malleable (Driscoll, 2002). Acting as economically autonomous and responsible meant for girls of this study that they have challenged the negative stereotypes regarding feminine adolescence and earned the respect of their families and communities, who treated them with fairness. The girls of this study value living in safe environments in which they feel accepted and loved by their peers and family members, which is consistent with studies on adolescent girls’ well- being (Wiens et al., 2014). They described parental and family support, as well as peer support, as fundamental for them to feel comfortable and protected. Jesse’s case was an example of how parental unconditional support may translate in different resources opportunities and conditions that are positive for girls. In addition, these feelings of safety and unconditional support seem critical for girls in this study since, as some authors have described, girls often operate in an overall hostile environment that tends to underestimate them, their opinions, preferences, and problems to different degrees (Eckert, 2014; Manne, 2017). 81 Not all participants felt supported and unconditionally loved and accepted by their parents, but all of them believe it should be the case. Along these lines, since the majority of the participants lived with and were raised by their mothers, discourses on motherhood also seemed relevant to understanding their expectations of how a good and supportive mother should be. According to some studies, there is a growing social discourse of motherhood that describes it as intensified – mothers are seen as needing to be firmly and completely centered on their children’s needs, encouraging self-sacrificing and always “being there” (Perrier, 2013). The expectation derived from this discourse is very exigent and could be particularly hard to accomplish by working-class mothers. For example, the mothers of almost all participants of this dissertation were single and in charge of the family. They are among the 3.860 female-headed single-parent households in Coyhaique, which represents 84% of the total single-parent households (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, 2019). Being in this position logically impacts their ability to have quality time with their daughters as well as likely affects the mothers’ levels of stress. In that line, contexts in which girls’ mothers are receptive to their needs, listen to them, understand them, and, in addition, have the structural conditions that allow them to do those things are particularly beneficial for their well-being. Regarding peer support, belonging and acceptance were key aspects that were mentioned by girls, which is consistent with the literature on adolescent well-being (Avedissian & Alayan, 2021). Girls of this study highlighted that good peer relationship create contexts in which they feel safe, respected, and protected, augmenting their ability to deal with problems. In that sense, all the participants were either harmed by peers or suffered from bullying, which was a critical concern and had terrible consequences for their mental health. Bullying has been a priority in the literature on adolescent well-being in educational spaces (Svane et al., 2019). Importantly, bullying is often a gendered practice, as the literature has established that girls display specific behaviors and motivations for bullying that are directly related to gender (McClanahan et al., 2015). In the case of 82 this study, girls experienced all forms of violence and discrimination, including physical violence, more typical among boys, and also verbal bullying, more typical to girls, which frequently involved being bullied for body features. The international evidence also shows that behaviors related to non- physical violence are less noticeable for adults and have shown fewer reactions of sympathy and help (McClanahan et al., 2015), putting girls in a disadvantaged position to receive institutional support. In addition, the data of this study also show that girls did not always label being victims of peer aggression as being bullied, which could indicate an incomplete understanding of what constitutes bullying. Finally, it is interesting that in all the cases, all the peer aggressions commented on in the interviews were perpetrated by other girls and never by male peers. I interpret this as illustrating the specific importance conceded to female peers’ acceptance and belonging, with the understanding that being rejected or bullied by other girls seemed more significant to the participants and therefore worthy of mention in the interviews. Schools, universities, the police and workplaces were highlighted as significant contexts at an institutional level. In the case where those were safe spaces for them, the institutions were sources of support and protection and gave participants the possibility of flourishing and developing their interests and talents. Other studies with children and youth populations in Chile have shown similar results, describing that the participants assign great importance to being supported in their personal life projects and aims, increasing their levels of life satisfaction (Alfaro-Inzunza et al., 2019). In addition, the results described girls’ perceptions of specific practices that institutions do that contribute to their well-being, but the literature on adolescent well-being in institutional spaces –in specific, schools– have tended to ignore what the institutions are doing right, assuming a deficit perspective to understand barriers to well-being, and fixing perceived problems through remedial interventions (Svane et al., 2019). A promotional perspective also should be understood as gendered since girls and boys do not receive the same type of support. As the results of this study show, boys 83 and girls need to be recognized for their abilities and talents. However, the types of aptitudes and interests that are encouraged in institutional spaces are linked to gendered practices (Kerr et al., 2012). The results show that institutions can go beyond gender stereotypes and offer spaces of development to all students, carefully observing their interests and talents, and helping them academically and emotionally, so they can thrive. Along these lines, the participants of this study provided concrete and valuable examples of teachers and administrative behaviors and attitudes that could serve as guidelines to promote well-being in educational spaces The final structural condition mentioned by girls was a safe community environment as leading to well-being. When the reaction of the community is not what girls need, they feel unprotected and powerless. Particularly, those participants that identify themselves as feminists or hold feminist viewpoints to analyze their community and their own lives experienced negative affects such as discomfort, frustration, and anger, very similar to what some authors have described in other populations of feminists women (Conlin et al., 2021). Subjective well-being and psychological well-being are defined by the absence of such affects, which is controversial from a feminist standpoint. On the one hand, rage is a major catalyst of social change but is also historically denied to girls and women in general (Chemaly, 2018). As Chemaly (2018) clearly explains, when a woman in any environment outside the home expresses anger, she is inevitably disrupting gender norms, which leads to social censorship, which prevents women from defending themselves and speaking up to challenge injustices and issues that are relevant for them. Chemaly’s insights are particularly useful to interpret the results of this study. Being socialized from early childhood to not show anger, and not reaching yet the adult status of women that can be angry within their gender role boundaries –a mother being angry, or a teacher, for example, is acceptable–girls are entirely unallowed to demonstrate their rage. Although anger is not a comfortable feeling, discourses that discourage girls from being angry and exploring the reasons beneath those feelings limit their critical 84 consciousness and dissuade them from pursuing social changes and exercising their agency, which would lead them to well-being. Similarly, Ahmed (2021) studies the act of complaint –which is seen here as a natural outcome of feeling anger– and how social discourses channel complaint as a message that should not be heard, mostly based on the identities of those complaining (Ahmed, 2021). Unsurprisingly, the participants –adolescent girls from modest backgrounds– who complained and asked for help were often unheard by the institutions. Their claims were disregarded, which was tremendously disheartening for them. There is an important difference between well-being as an individual project and the feminist consciousness. The latter underlines that women’s liberation is a collective endeavor that involves the freedom of everyone to live free of oppression (Arruzza et al., 2019). As mentioned at the beginning of this section, participants of this study seem to have acquired the dominant psychological discourses of well-being, embracing an individual perspective on what contributes to well-being. On the other hand, the participants also discussed structural factors that impact well- being, and within those, some interpreted that the necessary changes that will bring them well-being will also lead to justice and respect for all girls and women. For those participants, that feminist consciousness was accompanied by feelings of discomfort, isolation, and loneliness that, according to Ahmed (2017), functions as a key social mechanism to stop feminists from achieving changes. As Ahmed (2017) calls it, feminists become killjoys. Again, the relationship between subjective or psychological well-being –i.e., pursuing life satisfaction and positive affect– and the discomfort that the feminist critical consciousness provokes (Conlin et al., 2021) posit what seems a contradiction between both projects. Study limitations This study was done using data collected two years ago. Between the time the data were collected and the dissertation was written, two relevant sociohistorical events happened. First, Chile 85 had a social revolution that was sparked by adolescents’ protests, and secondly, a global pandemic happened with extended periods of quarantine in Coyhaique. I mention these two events because the method chosen to do this dissertation’s analysis involves the sociohistorical conditions in which the discourse is produced. In that sense, it is expected that girls’ discourses may have changed substantially during these last two years, as the whole of Chilean society has shown dramatic changes in this period. While this study can serve as a point of comparison to identify those changes, recognizing the influence of such sociohistorical events on girls’ discourses of well-being, it may be expected that the results have been subjected to change. Replicating this study could shed light on how these discourses have been changed by the pandemic and the social revolution. A second limitation of this study is the absence of a member-checking instance that would allow identifying analytical flaws and biases. This limitation is critical in epistemological terms, as giving recognition and a principal role to girls’ voices was key for this study. I was unable to contact almost all the participants after 2019, and, connecting to the above, it did not seem suitable to check the results and interpretations with a group of girls that were no longer living in the same sociohistorical scenario. To overcome this limitation, I have annexed all the analytical memos that I wrote and discussed with my advisor, trying to expose my rationale with transparency in order to control my own biases and maintain reflexivity. However, conducting a member check would have been an additional mechanism to ensure the quality of this project. To conduct additional activities to validate these results, even if it is not with the same participants, would be beneficial to augment the quality of this research. Thirdly, the results that this dissertation can offer are a limited photograph of the reality of a handful of girls living in Patagonia. More research is necessary to produce the knowledge that would make girls’ well-being a priority on the local government agenda. The design of the study does not 86 look for causality or generalizable knowledge and, therefore, only reflects the opinions of the girls involved in this study. Implications for research, practice, and policy. As explained in the first part of this study, the research on adolescent girls’ well-being is very limited and does not provide enough information regarding how girls experience and interpret their living conditions in terms of what they believe it is to have a good life. This study contributes to augmenting the knowledge on this particular area in a population that has been often silenced and ignored in the well-being literature. The study also adds a gender perspective to understand the structural matters that girls care about. This study also offers insights on how individual-level discourses of well-being –related to optimism, resilience, strength, and magical voluntarism– are seen as paths to achieving well-being but also can be detrimental for girls if they believe that well-being only depends on their will and self- management. In some cases, such discourses can deepen the vulnerability of girls through neglecting the harmful effects of unsafety, precarity, and even trauma in their life. Paying attention and making visible how structural factors, conditions, and barriers are key to achieving well-being can counterbalance the individual-responsibility discourses that are widespread in psychology. In the same line, interventions devoted to promoting well-being among adolescents are often focused on individual levels and do not necessarily address the structural problems that can be grounding lesser levels of well-being for girls (Wright & Mcleod, 2015). According to this study, the structural-level factors are relevant for girls, particularly those that make contexts safe and free of gender-based stereotypes that are detrimental to girls’ well-being. Building networks of female adolescents, addressing peer aggression, and creating protected spaces in which girls can develop friendships as well as talents and interests, could be key in interventions to promote well-being within educational institutions. 87 In addition, participants were explicit about which behaviors and attitudes of their educational institutions and teachers were contributing to their well-being. Schools and institutions that offer help ask students how they are and assume an active role in the provision of support services are perceived as kind, respectful, and safe. In that sense, schools and other institutions in education have the potential to become fundamental supportive networks for girls. In another vein, this research illustrates relationships between different structural factors that influence girls’ well-being. For example, it shows interactions between needing to take care of others, material deprivation, and access to educational opportunities, and how that impacts girls’ current and future well-being. To consider how different conditions are networked and constitute the context in which girls operate is important to address systemic problems that girls face. This could constitute valuable information for public policymakers, as some of those conditions are at the roots of the social and economic disadvantage of women in Chilean society. In addition, girls of this study also described public services and public spaces that are seen as unsafe and community reactions to violence which deepen those feelings of unsafety. Altogether, this study makes this reality visible and, I believe, relevant for regional authorities in charge of public-policy making. Considering the current political climate in Chile, in which the government has defined feminism in public policy as a national priority, this study is aligned with the current national political forces and defines problems and barriers that can be changed. The current sociohistorical conditions would allow doing so. In terms of future directions of research, there is very little attention given to the potential benefits of female friendships during adolescence. The growing interest in the Latin American concept of sororidad, a term coined by Mexican feminist Marcela Lagarde to define female political solidarity and friendship with other women, offers a promising scope to work with women during adolescence in educational spaces. Sororidad refers to the idea that women supporting each other 88 have a historical reach and a political base, as it is a pact between female individuals that becomes a political agenda and a citizenship project (Lagarde, 2006). Relevant to the topic of this study, sororidad can be seen as a useful foundational concept to explore among adolescents and eventually design interventions that promote collectiveness among girls. Furthermore, studies on feminist adult women showed that they develop higher levels of subjective well-being when they engage in collective activism with other women and lower when they remain lonely and isolated (Conlin et al., 2021). Thus, feminist activism, sororidad, collectiveness, and solidarity with other marginalized groups can be seen as key elements to designing interventions for augmenting girls’ levels of well-being. 89 CONCLUSIONS Understanding what girls believe leads to well-being is a step toward recognizing the specific strategies that girls use to navigate female adolescence. Importantly, the girls of this study were primarily focused on their own individual behaviors and attitudes and less concerned about the structure of opportunities in which they operate. Along these lines, the results of this study showed that well-being is connected to girls’ ability to challenge the pervasive cultural preconception of girls being trivial and frivolous. Such images of girls seem to be determinants of how they are (mis)treated in different contexts. On the other hand, the structural factors that were described by girls as positive for their well-being also offer opportunities and paths for disrupting the social order that has relegated girls to the lower levels of social hierarchy. This study shed light on how positive contexts –the structure of opportunities, material factors, family, peers, institutional networks, and communities– can affect girls’ well-being. A systematic analysis of such practices on a larger scale would be very useful to Coyhaique’s public policymakers, offering solutions at different levels of intervention. 90 APPENDICES 91 APPENDIX A: Interview Protocol 1. How do you define the word well-being? 2. How do you define well-being for yourself? 3. Can you describe how a regular week looks like for you? What do you do? [Probing questions]: For each life domain mentioned by participant, examples of probing: Family: When you say “family”, who are they? What do you do when your family gets together? How do you feel about your family? Are you and your family close? / Do you have good relationship? Why/why not? How would you like it to be? What don’t you like about it? School: What school are you attending to? Do you like your school? What do you like about it? What do you like about going to school? What don’t like about it? For each life domain: 4. Can you tell me a good story about your [life domain]? Some moment you enjoyed, or you remember as a happy moment? - Why do you think you felt that way? Did these things happen to you often? If no, why? 5. Can you tell me a story about your [life domain] that made you feel bad? Some moment you feel very sad, angry, or disappointed? - Why do you think you felt that way? Did this happen often? If yes, why? If participant only have negative or positive stories in a life domain: I’ve notice that you only said negative/positive stories on this domain, is anything else you’ll like to add? For each life domain: 6. If you need to think about the stories in this life domain, do you think it has something to do with any of these things? If yes, how? [show capabilities from Global Youth Index list with brief graphic explanation: Gender Equality; Health; Housing: Safety and Security; Economic Opportunity: Education: Citizen Participation] 92 7. Are there any other stories about these things I just showed you? 8. How would you prefer this to be? What would you change of the [capability] to make it better? Do you think that might also affect others? How/why? Do you feel this limits in any way to live the life you prefer? In what sense? 9. Looking at all the responses you just gave me, how do you feel about your previous definition of the word well-being. 10. How was this process for you? How did you feel during this interview? 93 APPENDIX B: Analytical memos Memo 1: Antonia. Background Vignette Antonia is 15. She lives with her mother and her sister. The sister has special needs. Antonia’s mother is single and has a full-time job, so Antonia takes care of her sister on a daily basis and for several year now. Antonia’s mother is alcoholic, and her mother and sister have a tense relationship, they fight constantly and her sister escapes from home often. She also has two older siblings who live in regions outside Aysén. Besides school, Antonia is part of the Youth Orchestra, a nation-wide program that supports children and adolescents through musical education. Antonia plays an instrument and participates in weekly rehearsals. This activity is very important for her and represents a space of psychological and social support. How Antonia describes what contributes to their well-being? Antonia defined well-being as feeling happiness, sometimes angry, but not in excess, shame and laugh, everything that makes us be ourselves, with our ways of being and regulate everything harmful. Interestingly, her definition takes distance from the notions of well-being based on positive affect towards one more oriented to balance and acceptance. Her definition of well-being emphasizes how one needs to manage different types of affective states, including the negative ones, and accepting them. I interpret Antonia’s emphasis on acceptance as connected to roles and expectations. This was a topic that she frequently mentioned during the interview. The fragment below illustrates a reflection and a concrete situation in which Antonia felt her mother has too many expectations about her academic behavior. Fragment 26: Antonia STANZA 74 STANZA 74 94 Fragment 26 (cont’d) I: ¿Pero ha pasado algo así alguna vez, que tú te hayas I: but, has this happened to you, have you ever sentido así? felt like that? ¿Alguna situación que tú hayas dicho "Ah, no puedo Any specific situation in which you’d say, “Oh, bajar las notas"? so I can’t lower my grades”? ¿O cómo te diste cuenta que eso era un problema? Or how did you notice that this was a problem? A: Cuando a veces tienen mucha expectativa de mí, A: When they have too many expectations on me y a mí no me gusta, porque yo sé que a veces igual and I don’t like it because I know that cometo errores, sometimes I make mistakes as well o sea igual puedo decepcionar y cosas asi pero es como I mean, I can disappoint and things like that but is like "No, la Antonia no" Yo tampoco soy perfecta, pero no “No, Antonia won’t” I’m not perfect, but I sé don’t know I: ¿Alguna vez alguien te dijo algo que te hizo sentir I: Have someone said something that made you así? feel that way? A: Es que a veces mi mamá A: Sometimes my mom o cosas así siempre es como muy buena, or things like that, always like she is too good y yo le dije una vez and one day I said to her "pero no siempre voy a tener buenas notas" y me dijo “but I won’t have good grades always” and she said "pero es que tu no puedes bajar tus notas" “but it’s just, you can’t lower your grades” Entonces es como... So is like… 95 I interpret this whole fragment, as a reflection about what does it mean for Antonia to feel she needs to be perfect all the time to not disappoint anyone. Within the fragment, other codes such as roles and expectations, and positionalities are present. Antonia understands that accomplishing her role within the family is closely related to achieving academic success. In this way, she is expected to be perfect and not disappoint anyone. The phrase “I mean, I can disappoint and things like that but is like “No, Antonia won’t” I’m not perfect, but I don’t know”, shows that Antonia interprets this expectation as unavoidable and simultaneously unattainable. It would contribute to Antonia’s well- being to feel less family expectations and more unconditional acceptance. Being allowed to fail or be imperfect without disappointing people would reduce Antonia’s stress and pressure. Studies on parental expectations tend to show their positive impacts on adolescent well- being, but international evidence has also presented a significative relationship between parental expectations on academic achievement, and depressive symptomatology (Ma et al., 2018). While this study does not disaggregate gender differences, it is likely that parental expectations affect girls and boys differently and is closely depending on culture too. For example, in a study developed in México, results shown that female adolescents showed a stronger relationships between depressive symptoms and parents’ practices of imposition and psychological control (Andrade et al., 2012), suggesting that girls in this context are more sensitive to parental pressure. According to the authors, these types of differences were not supported by the international literature. In a different study, also in México, the results about gender differences and academic expectations were contradictory to the international evidence as well (Palomar-Lever & Victorio-Estrada, 2017). In this context, girls were more likely to take their education seriously, and did not have significant differences regarding their academic achievement expectations. While the international evidence is mostly concentrated in Europe and United States, these studies show how context, in this case, Latin America, can make a difference in the way adolescent girls face parental and academic expectations. 96 In addition, some roles and expectations are internalized by Antonia, becoming natural and mentioned as obvious in her daily life. Among those roles it that Antonia acts like her sister’s caregiver. To be a caregiver is the most critical social practice that the interview revealed, as it is directly connecting social conditions and gender. The following fragment illustrates her functions as providing care and how she has made them part of her routine. Fragment 27: Antonia STANZA 33 STANZA 33 y le dije ya, ya, and I said, ok, ok yo la baño mañana, I will bathe her tomorrow, entonces mi mamá se fue como a las, then, my mom left at, eran las una, porque pasó donde mi abuela, It was at 1, because she stopped by my grandma y yo la bañé a la hora de las tres, and I bathed her at 3 porque había más solcito. because it was sunnier Y la casa estaba más calentita cuando prendí el calentador, And the house was warmer when I started the heater, entonces la bañé y tenía dolores de piernas. then I bathed her, her legs were in pain STANZA 34 STANZA 34 Igual fue difícil, pero la bañé y después seguía con dolores. It was hard, but I bathed her, and she was still in pain Y de ahí puse el calentador, I started the heater then, cociné unas milanesas, para tomar con té, cooked some milanesas to have with tea y nos pusimos a ver supongamos and we watched like la sirenita, la cenicienta, cosas que a ella le gustan. Little Mermaid, Cinderella, things she likes 97 Fragment 27 (cont’d) Y ahí quedó tranquilita And then she was calmed. In addition to social expectations, this fragment shows material factors that are intertwined in the practice. Antonia cannot have the heater working all day long, although it seems critical for her sister’s pain relief. She does not administer painkillers, because, as she comments later, her mother is worried that she can develop tolerance. Instead, Antonia cooks and serves food for her sister, and keeps her company. After this fragment, Antonia reflects and said it contributes to their well-being to be quiet and relaxed at home. But when the three of us are there (“Estar tranquila, estar relajada en la casa. Pero cuando estamos las tres”). Antonia explained this last comment later, saying that when her mother is not at home, she needs to take care of her sister by herself, who is sometimes in a bad mood (“especita”, dense). This social practice is relevant because it is directly shaped by gender. It has been clearly established that acting as a caregiver is mostly assumed by women, globally and in Latin America. This is also de case for underaged girls, who often take care of siblings and sick relatives at home (Estupiñán Aponte, 2014). Interestingly, the literature shows that these tasks have shown both negative and positive effects on girls’ well-being. On the one hand, to assume more domestic work is related to exhaustion and excessive burden, which is detrimental for girls’ health, increases stress, anxiety, leads to school failure, among other problems (Araya, 2003) but on the other hand, it has been also connected to self-esteem, emotional development and sense of responsibility (Estupiñán Aponte, 2014). This duplicity is noticeable in Antonia’s case, since she describes taking care of her sister as a hard job that demands her great energy, but at the same time gives her a feeling of achievement and quietness that she deems contributes to her well-being. 98 Notes for results: Other interviews that talk about excessive academic expectations: Princess Kim, Tessa. Other interviews that talk about taking care siblings or relatives: Gema, Jesse Memo 2: Carla. Background Vignette Carla is 19. She lives with her mom. Her parents were separated, and her dad died a few months before the interview. She visits her grandparents every day. Carla has half-siblings that live in Argentina and visit often. She did not like studying and was retained at school for two years for bad grades. Then, she switched schools and went for a year to a 2x1 institution –a type of high school that concentrates classes, so students finish their education in half of the time. Still, without motivation for studying, she decided to dropout school. She is currently thinking about going back to school and maybe studying French after that. Since she dropout school, Carla has been working babysitting kids. A specific family has hired her for every day of the week. By the time this interview was done, Carla had been working with that family for three years and had seen the kids grow up. She is very emotionally attached to the family, feels comfortable in their home, and loves the kids. Carla’s mom works in another home doing housekeeping and babysitting kids too. Carla and her mom share living costs, splitting the bills in half. Carla also spends money on clothes and sometimes goes out with her only friend from school. This happens about once per month. The participant wanted to live in Chiloé, an island located north of Patagonia. Her extended family lives there, and she wanted to stay with them and start a new life. When the interview was done, Carla had bought the tickets to leave but decided not to at the last moment. She did not want to leave her mom, but she did not want to live in Coyhaique anymore. 99 How Carla describes what contributes to their well-being Carla describes well-being as feeling comfortable and relaxed, spending time with the people she cares about. She likes to be around family, doing simple activities like watching tv or cooking. Carla also enjoys being alone, driving or staying at home, listening to music, and being in her own world, as she explained. Consistently, Carla does not like parties or going out. She feels insecure around people she does not know, does not trust in strangers, and fears that anyone can hurt her. In addition, she feels constantly threatened by men. This feeling of unsafety limits her life and activities in several ways. Carla attended a private school, had poor grades, and was retained for two years until the school expelled her. She then went to a public school, but the classmates were hostile; they called her cuica –upper-class, snobby– threatened her with knives, and pushed her during breaks. In addition to having a hard time in her new school, she was still not interested in studying, so she dropout school during her first year of high school. By the time of the interview, Carla was 19 and had not started her high school level education. Limited activities The most salient information of this interview is that Carla is constantly afraid in public situations and does not trust strangers. She does not like to go out and has limited social interactions with people of her age. Carla is also very vigilant about her alcohol intake if she goes to a party. She believes that if she is drunk, she can be an easy target for being sexually assaulted or robbed in the street. This fear came from events that happened in Aysén, and from Carla’s previous bad experiences. Among the events is the horrible crime committed against Nabila Rifo (explained in Ivone’s memo) and also Florencia Aguirre, a 9 year old murdered by her step farther and buried under the garage, with her mother’s complicity. Carla also mentioned other stories in Coyhaique, 100 about people stabbed on the street, and taxi drivers that drug girls for rape or rob them. Among her personal experiences, Carla commented that was had been harassed on the street by adult men of different ages. In addition, she mentioned that a driving instructor tried to kiss her during a class, put a hand on her leg, and then strongly grabbed her hands. She was deeply affected by this event, and when she went to the police, they did not act. This made her feel disappointed and unprotected. After that, Carla believed that she would not be defended if something happened to her. After the attack, Carla went to work shocked and anxious. At that moment, Carla was not planning on going to the police. But after talking to her bosses, the parents of the children she babysits every day, she decided to go to the police. The fragment below explains their reaction to the event. Fragment 28: Carla STANZA 47 STANZA 47 Yo la verdad es que me iba a quedar callada, I was going to say quiet iba a seguir con mi curso, pero como que dije, continue my driving class, but I was like ay no, tampoco podía, No, I can’t do that dije bueno ya, me voy a retirar mejor. so I said, ok, I better dropout driving school Pero, la señora me dijo, but my boss told me no te puedes quedar callada, ella me convenció, you can’t stay quiet, she convinced me me dijo, tu siempre tienes que estar segura de lo que pasó. she said, you need to be always clear about what happened Así que ella me dio fortaleza, me dio seguridad. she gave me strength, gave me confidence. Me ayudó. She helped me. As the fragment shows, they immediately offered support and help after she told them what happened. To count on the support of the family she works for was of great importance for her. As 101 the fragment illustrates, while she thought she better quit the class and stays quiet, the boss made her feel confident and regain control of the situation, offering her options, “she gave me strength, gave me confidence, she helped me”. Carla evaluated this gesture as contributing to her well-being in the middle of a situation impeding it, demonstrating how important it was for her to have someone believing her story and willing to support her. This support made her want to speak up and go to the police. However, it was mostly a gesture of trust and a help offering. As mentioned before, the police did not do anything, and she had to leave the class anyways. The confidence and clarity expressed by Carla’s boss remind of a difference in positionality and cultural values. Being part of a different social class determines that some women, like Carla’s boss, are used to search and find justice, while others are not. Despite not achieving justice, it was important for Carla to know that her bosses would care if something happened to her. This strengthens their relationship and contributes to Carla’s well- being, as her job was a safe space where people protected her. In the following fragment, Carla explains why she believed the family was so supportive. Fragment 29: Carla STANZA 49 STANZA 49 I: ¿A que te refieres con que saben como eres? What do you mean with that they know how you are? C: Que soy tranquila, C: That I am calmed que no soy de esas chicas locas not like one of those crazy girls que les coquetean a los viejos. that flirt with old guys Como ese tipo de chicas. those type of girls I: Que de esas chicas igual hay en Coyhaique… I: And you can find those girls in Coyhaique… C: SI, o sea hay en todas partes. C: Yes, I mean, you can find them everywhere 102 Fragment 29 (cont’d) I: O sea que te refieres a que tu no te lo buscaste. I: you mean that you did not ask for it C: Claro, exacto. C: Yes, exactly The fragment shows that Carla believes that sometimes there are girls that “ask” through their behavior for this type of treatment, justifying sexual violence. That was not her case, as she claims she behaves appropriately. The family sees that in her, knowing how she is. Such recognition serves as a legitimization of her behavior and her as a person. The fragment talks about positionality and social expectations. She recognizes that certain behaviors are acceptable as a girl while others can lead to suffering violence and abuse. For example, she called girls that flirt “crazy girls”. I interpret the utterance as illustrating Carla’s constant fear of being harmed by a man: A girl should be crazy to expose herself to such a dangerous situation. Carla has normalized events like this happen to girls that have a “wrong” attitude or behavior. In opposition, a “sane” girl like herself would never do that, although even behaving properly, she was attacked. In that sense, the fragment describes how Carla, as a girl, needs to know how to operate in a patriarchal system that she anticipates will not change nor protect her. Carla’s fragment illustrates that to not be harmed –and experience well-being– a girl needs to understand the world in which she lives and act accordingly to protect herself. The fragment is mentioned as an explanation for the supportive attitude of Carla’s bosses. It implies that if she were a “crazy girl”, they would not have offered her help. Therefore, to fit in the expected behavior not only offers safety but also support, and lastly, respect. Carla assumes she would not have been believed or heard. In that line, the fragment demonstrates the type of treatment that girls have when they step out of the expected behavior. 103 Taking care of children Since Carla dropout school, she has been working as a babysitter. She learned to take care of children with a little cousin she used to babysit when she was about 8. She changed his diapers and fed him. She grew up taking care of that cousin and then started babysitting for money. She started babysitting the children of the family that had hired her mom as a housekeeper. Then, friends of that family started to call her too. Carla’s job is informal. She only babysits children for some hours each day. Although she works for one of the families every day and for about three years now, she is not hired; she is paid by the hour and has no social security. Accordingly, the relationship between them is also informal. Carla has an emotional bond with this particular family. As an example, she has tried to quit the job several times, but the family says they would miss her, and she came back. She said she feels she cannot leave them. The fragment shows the important emotional attachment that Carla has for the kids she babysits. Fragment 30: Carla STANZA 67 STANZA 67 Como a veces digo, Sometimes I say habré nacido solamente para ellos, I may be born only for them porque de verdad que a veces, Because sometimes, really me he retirado como dos o tres veces, I have quitted twice or three times pero no puedo, no puedo, But I can’t, I can’t es como que me llaman ellos, I feel they call me back como que me encantan esos niños I really love those children Although she was 19 when the interview was done, Carla started working before the age majority. There is very little information regarding the well-being of adolescent workers. Although 104 thousands of adolescents are in this situation in Latin America, it is a neglected aspect since it does not represent the reality of adolescents living in industrialized western countries. Importantly, adolescent workers suffer several forms of discrimination for being underage and for having their labor conditions not regulated. International agencies like ILO have claimed to abolish child labor, but there are cultural, economic, and political issues in Latin America that make this unattainable and sometimes even incompatible with well-being promotion (Arteche & Bandeira, 2003). Thus, examining the conditions of adolescent workers and regulating them are fundamental steps to advance their protection. In that line, while some studies have shown that work is detrimental for adolescents’ well-being since it adds additional stress to a particularly stressful stage in life, others have shown that work has a positive effect on subjective well-being (Arteche & Bandeira, 2003). However, this is only found for certain types of work, particularly those that contribute to adolescents’ education (Arteche & Bandeira, 2003). In addition to the several ethical complexities related to adolescent workers in general, it is relevant to mention that Carla’s type of work is heavily gendered. Carla is a paid informal caregiver that happens in a domestic space and that is normally performed by women. As Carla’s case exemplifies, sexual division of work started during childhood, establishing that girls should be working in “reproductive” tasks, including caregiving (Pávez, 2013). Those tasks are lees socially and economically valued, and girls are often forced or convinced to perform them (Pávez, 2013). The same author explains that an important mechanism to make girls perform those tasks is persuading them to do it for love. Carla’s fragment may illustrate the interiorization of that mechanism. The ambiguity of the relationship between Carla and the family has a contradictory relationship with her well-being. On the one hand, it allows her to be in a safe and caring space, economically support her family, and spend time with people she likes. On the other hand, she is not accessing education, cannot aspire to higher wages, and her job situation is absolutely precarious. While the first is 105 explicitly contributing to her well-being, the latter and its consequences for her future are not recognized. Memo 3: Gema. Background Vignette Gema (18) is in second year of high school. She lives with her mom, her brother and her brother’s girlfriend. Gema’s mother has several health issues, and Gema says she and her brother have been taking care of her. For work, Gema’s mother sells little bouquets at the cemetery, as she is unable to work in more demanding jobs. Her brother is a waiter. Their family income is based on their jobs and an additional amount that Gema’s grandma (dad’s side) sends every month. The dad’s side of the family live in Santiago. She only has been there once, when she was 10. During that visit, the father did not show interest in seeing her. Gema was frustrated and disappointed. Her grandparents from her mother’s side live in Coyhaique. Gema’s grandmother has schizophrenia and lives in an institution. Gema’s mother visits her often. Her grandfather also lives in an institution but has no contact with Gema’s mother. Gema would like them to have a better relationship and have been trying to convince her mother to forgive him for his abusive behavior during Gema’s mother childhood. Gema was born with a physical malformation that I will not explain to protect her confidentiality. That have costed her surgery and medical treatments since childhood. Although barely visible, her classmates made fun of her looks and bullied her since she was little, affecting her deeply. Gema defines well-being as having mental peace, not being uncomfortable, having good health, not having toxic relationships. The following fragment shows Stanza 2 at the beginning of the interview, in which she expands her definition, highlighting good peer relationships as a crucial element. 106 Fragment 31: Gema STANZA 2 STANZA 2 I: ¿No tener relaciones tóxicas? I: Not having toxic relationships? G: Lo de estar cómodo G: It’s about being comfortable I: Ya. ¿Qué significa estar cómodo, a qué te refieres? I: What do you mean by being comfortable? G: En las relaciones sociales, por ejemplo G: In social relationships, for example I: Las relaciones sociales I: Social relationships G: Tener amigos G: To have friends Gema's case exemplifies the relationship between well-being and peer acceptance. For Gema, peer rejection meant the experience of negative affect –one key component of subjective well-being– such as feeling depressed, lonely, unsafe, and uncomfortable. Accordingly, her definition of well-being is based on having good social relationships and feeling comfortable in social settings. In her interview, Gema connects peer rejection, negative affect, and school performance, showing how low levels of subjective well-being (due to peer rejection) can have substantial detrimental effects on the academic path. During Gema's childhood, peer rejection reached a critical state. Showing low levels of subjective well-being, Gema was depressed and uncomfortable, did not want to go out of bed, felt anxious in different settings, and refused to go to school. The following fragment shows how Gema explains her reasons for school non-attendance. Fragment 32: Gema STANZA 11 STANZA 11 G: No recuerdo muy bien por qué empecé, G: I don’t remember how it started pero fue porque, But it was because por lo mismo, Same reason porque en mi antigua escuela me trataban, Because in my old school they treated me… 107 Fragment 32 (cont’d) o sea desde pequeñita I mean, since I was little no tuve muy buenas amigas, I didn’t have very good friends me juntaba con el grupo popular, claro, I spent time with the popular girls, of course y luego... no sé cómo ponerlo en palabras. And then… I don’t know how to put this on words O sea no tuve muy buenas relaciones de pequeña I mean, I didn’t have very good relationships when I was little STANZA 12 STANZA 12 I: Por tus compañeros I: Because of your classmates G: Por mis compañeros, claro. G: My classmates, yes Y al final... no era bullying, And at the end… it wasn’t bullying sino era desplazamiento, But displacement, no me tomaban en cuenta y cosas, They did not consider me and those things y me harté, And I got sick of it y dejé de querer ir a la escuela And stop wanting to go to school Although Gema explicitly says she does not believe she experienced bullying, the information provided seems like she did. The global literature on bullying and gender shows differences in the prevalence of forms depending on gender and what motivates bullying. In that line, girls are more likely to engage in bullying related to social exclusion, mainly based on appearance making fun of other girls' faces and bodies (McClanahan et al., 2015). In Gema's case, bullying was motivated by a physical malformation noticeable to her peers, who made fun of how she looked and moved. In addition, the form of bullying experienced by Gema was through ignoring her and sometimes telling harmful things to her. In both cases, Gema's experience of bullying 108 reflects gendered particularities. Importantly, unlike forms of bullying that involve physical abuse, social exclusion is less visible for schools, eliciting less care and sympathy for those who suffer from the emotional distress that social exclusion provokes (McClanahan et al., 2015). This evidence can be linked to Gema's case, as she did not have timely or appropriate support from adults. In addition, as a result of her extended school non-attendance, Gema was retained for two years, delaying her school completion, and therefore her future entrance to the job market. In that sense, besides detrimental effects on subjective well-being, peer rejection also involves economic consequences. As a girl from a low-income family, Gema is more exposed to financial stress, which is amplified by grade retention. Gema is aware that her retention has economic impacts on her family, increasing her stress and affecting her ability to make autonomous decisions regarding her future life. These are aspects that have been connected to subjective well-being, exposing the close relationship between material and subjective elements of this construct. In addition, the analysis shows at least one social practice that is stable for girls in Coyhaique from low-income families, illustrating how gender and culture shape the conditions that contribute to well-being. As Gema, many girls from low-income families apply for a nationwide benefit that ensures tuition-free university. However, the limited offer of academic programs in Coyhaique makes it necessary to leave the region to study several careers that are not imparted in the region. Moving outside the region involves additional costs that low-income families are often unable to afford. And many students from low-income families that are first-generation students prefer not to leave their region because they do not want to navigate the university experience without their support network (Pareja Pineda et al., 2021). In the specific case of girls, the possibility of moving outside the region is even more limited since many of them have assumed household responsibilities –like Gema– such as caring for family members and are more committed to helping with domestic chores. This 109 practice shows how the structural conditions that emerge from a national policy do not consider the reality of female students living in isolated regions, that, because of cultural gender roles and of their income situation, are less likely to move out (Pareja Pineda et al., 2021). Therefore, this pattern shows girls had a more limited set of opportunities than their male peers, particularly in terms of access to the educational offer, which impacts their future professional life and simultaneously contributes to the feminization of poverty. Gema's interview illustrates how these structural conditions, in combination with personal trajectories, have clear impacts on well-being. They can explain economic stress, and also an erroneous idea that not accessing university yields from personal failure instead of being a product of structural barriers, threatening psychological aspects essential for well-being, like self-esteem and sense of agency (Ross et al., 2020). Other interviews that talk about moving out of the region: Tessa, Princess Kim, Ivone Other interviews that talk about bullying: Kathy, Jesse Memo 4: Ivone. Background Vignette When this interview was done, Ivone was 17 and was living with her mother. She also has a sister to whom she is very close. Her parents are divorced. Her mother works in Puerto Aysén, about one hour from Coyhaique. Her dad picked up Ivone from home every morning and drove her to school. The participant switched school a year before the interview. The previous school was too focused on academic performance, discipline, and personal presentation rules, and Ivone resisted these rules, having frequent problems with the school’s authorities. The new school, on the contrary, is much more relaxed, allowing Ivone to focus on her academic performance instead of her personal presentation. 110 Ivone’s relationship with her dad is tense. She defines herself as bisexual, and her dad has shown homophobic attitudes. Because of that, Ivone had distanced herself from him. On the contrary, her mother has been supportive and kind, which made them closer. An important aspect mentioned in the interview is Ivone’s ideology. She defines herself as a radical feminist, which she named a fundamental part of her identity. She described some situations in which she was very outspoken or had problems with friends because she thinks differently about daily things. As a radical feminist, Ivone constantly pursues changes in her context and living conditions, which is not always possible for her. At the same time, these attitudes are sometimes rejected by other people around her. How Ivone describes what contributes to their well-being Ivone’s ideas regarding well-being were focused on having a peaceful social situation and uneventful relationships with peers and family members. With “social situation,” she referred to being in a comfortable position in different spaces of her life, which entails being able to communicate her ideas without having arguments with people she cares about. In line with her definition, Ivone highlighted her relationships with her mother and sister and described spending time with friends as among situations that foster her well-being. Relationships with others As can be seen in the fragments displayed –and different from the other interviews– Ivone often explicitly identified the connections between her daily experiences and macro level structures of oppression and power imbalance. Ivone thinks that this tendency is because of her commitment to radical feminism, which has made her see life through this ideological lens. For the same reason, peaceful relationships with family members and peers were not always possible. Ivone often found herself arguing and feeling frustrated and disappointed about how others think about different topics. Thus, while radical feminism is presented as a critical aspect of 111 Ivone’s life and identity, she also recognized that it sometimes impedes her well-being. As she described, she often felt misunderstood or lonely. For example, in the following fragment, Ivone described a situation of disagreement with a friend in which she needed to jump into a discussion. Fragment 33: Ivone STANZA 89 STANZA 89 pero recuerdo una vez cuando pasó esto de Nabila But I remember a time, when that thing with Rifo Nabila Rifo happened E: Sí E: Yes I: Se decía mucho de parte de gente que por poco hay I: people used to say that almost, que, se supone que ella ejercía la prostitución creo, It seems that she worked in prostitution, I guess o se decía algo así, or at least it was what it was said entonces la gente justificaba el hecho so, people justified the fact de que le hayan hecho tal atrocidad That someone made her something that horrible porque era prostituta, o sea que se lo andaba Because she was a prostitute, like she was buscando, looking for it y recuerdo una vez que una amiga dijo algo así como and I remember that one day a friend said something like "ya, pero igual era prostituta", “Ok, but she was a prostitute” y yo altiro salí a defender la situación, and I reacted immediately y decir que independiente de lo que sea una persona, I said that there is no relationship between someone’s occupation y eso ni siquiera es como que sea su culpa o... which is not something that you can blame her for 112 Fragment 33 (cont’d) una decisión de ella propiamente, or say that it was a properly made decision que se defienda tal atrocidad con eso to say that it such horror can be defended with that argument o sea nadie se merece que le saquen los ojos I mean, no one deserves someone takes away your eyes o que te traten tan mal por lo que haces or being mistreated for what you do STANZA 90 STANZA 90 E: Sí, ¿Y ella qué decía? E: What did she say? I: No sé, ahí igual no recuerdo I: I don’t know, I don’t remember E: ¿Tú te enojaste? E: Were you angry? I: Sí, yo me enojé, I: Yes, I was angry o sea me dieron hasta ganas de decir I mean, I even wanted to tell her que ella no era mi amiga, that she was not my friend porque era muy feo lo que ella pensaba, because what she thought was too ugly de todas maneras lo que ocurrió, anyway, what happened eso fue que nos distanciamos por el día, was that we distanced from each other that one day o quedó esa tensión entre las dos, or that tension was present between us pero no recuerdo que ella me haya respondido algo en but I don’t remember she replied anything back contra For general context, Ivone is talking about a horrible crime in Coyhaique in 2016, in which a couple got into a fight, and the guy cut out the victim’s eyes. As Ivone explains, some people claimed that the victim was a prostitute, as if this would make the crime less serious. Through this 113 example, Ivone explains how Coyhaique community values are highly patriarchal, to the point of condoning this level of violence against women. In addition, the fragment shows how misogynistic attitudes are present among female friends of her age. In this case, community cultural values contradict Ivone’s core values, which made her angry. In the example, one friend’s opinion embodies the community cultural values. The phrase “and I wanted to tell her she was not my friend” shows that Ivone sees a disagreement as a possible cause for cutting relationships. The fact that she did not end the relationship can be related to feeling worried about loneliness and isolation, as is described in Stanza 95 below. In this fragment, Ivone explains her reaction to a homophobic attack she and her girlfriend suffered while having dinner in a restaurant. Fragment 34: Ivone STANZA 95 STANZA 95 E: ¿Tú te sentías que te daba frustración? E: you felt frustrated? I: Sí, todo ese tipo de situaciones I: Yes, all those kind of things me da más que nada rabia Made me feel anger, more than anything E: Sí E: Yes I: De ponerme impotente y defender lo que yo estoy I: To feel powerless and defend what I am pensando, thinking pero al final uno termina como la loca, But in the end, people see you like the crazy one así que supongo que muchas veces So, I guess many times me ahorré eso de ponerme a discutir o de defender algo I spare myself from arguing and defending things E: Es cansador E: it’s tiring I: Sí, agotador I: yes, exhausting In this stanza, Ivone moved away from the particular situation and made a more general reflection regarding how she often feels anger when facing systemic injustices that she interpreted as 114 based on patriarchy. In addition, Ivone described that she has decided not to always defend her point of view based on fear of being called crazy. The use of the word “impotente” (powerless) is very unusual in this context and was used in a confusing way in a different fragment of the interview. I believe she may be confusing the word “impotente” with “prepotente,” which means arrogant, overbearing. If that was the case, Ivone’s phrase was “to become high-handed and defend what I am thinking,” pointing out that she was not worried about feeling powerless in these situations but to impose her perspective on others or maybe be aggressive or offensive. She added that constantly feeling judged (“people see you like the crazy one”) is exhausting. Ahmed (2017) has described these kinds of feelings as common among feminists. The theorist explains that facing systems of oppression is exhausting for feminists and that they often feel isolated and misunderstood by their social circles. Accordingly, exhausted feminists stop asking for changes and justice, avoiding feeling rejected by the context in which they operate, and the oppressive conditions of the system can keep reproducing itself. This seems to apply to Ivone’s case too. Ivone is not only worried that she can be called crazy, but she is also worried about her relationship with her peers. As many studies have noted, peers’ acceptance is a relevant aspect for adolescent well-being (Avedissian & Alayan, 2021). Interestingly, these studies do not refer to the cost of feeling accepted, making friendships, and having a vibrant social life when adolescents need to change who they are to fit in. Similarly, fragment 3 below shows that Ivone believes that her dad does not accept her for who she is and how that has negatively impacted her well-being. Fragment 35: Ivone STANZA 61 STANZA 61 E: Y eso contribuye a tu bienestar. Entonces, E: and that contributes to your well-being. ¿Otra cosa que a tí se te ocurra, something else that comes to your mind, 115 Fragment 35 (cont’d) que me puedas decir como de este ámbito? or that you can tell me on that domain? I: Bueno, en el ámbito malo, I: well, in a negative way yo creo que esto se da por un tema como del contexto I believe this happens because of the social social de la región, context of this region de todo el tema del machismo, de cómo es la gente, of machismo, and how people are sobre todo la gente más mayor, particularly old people como mi papá que igual tiene la edad de mi mamá. like my dad, although he and my mom are the same age STANZA 62 STANZA 64 Yo tuve una pareja mujer, I had a girlfriend y cuando mi papá supo, salió a luz todo este tema social, and when my dad knew, all those social issues en él, became clear como su, me dejó en claro cuál era su posición respecto a like he, he was clear on his position regarding la homosexualidad, homosexuality y de cómo le chocaba a él que su hija fuera, on how it was awkward for him that his daughter was yo me defino como bisexual, I defined myself as bisexual entonces sentirme como rechazada, so, feeling rejected y tal vez como motivo de vergüenza para mi papá, and maybe a reason for my dad to feel ashamed me hizo sentir muy triste en su momento, that made me feel very sad y hasta el día de hoy es algo que considero and until now I believe que es de mis penas más grandes respecto a mis papás, this is one of my greatest sorrows regarding my parents 116 Fragment 35 (cont’d) el tema de no sentirme aceptada incondicionalmente that he did not make me feel unconditionally siendo que soy su hija accepted, considering I’m his daughter. This fragment is very clear about how Ivone interprets her dad’s behavior and how she feels sad and disappointed about not being unconditionally accepted. In the beginning of the fragment, Ivone explains what she believes are the roots of her dad’s behavior. The phrase “considering I’m his daughter” shows how Ivone uses her position to define her expectations of how her dad should act. In addition to the clear importance of parental acceptance for Ivone, the fragment illustrates a pattern in which Ivone is mistreated each time she steps out of what seems to be what others have defined as good behavior. In this case, the parental assumption of heterosexuality is threatened, and her dad’s reaction to it is to be unsupportive and reject her for who she is. Material conditions In addition to social relationships, Ivone recognizes that having a good economic situation and material resources are important factors for achieving well-being, although she seems conflicted about making decisions that would only contribute to her material stability and not to her personal development. Ivone wanted to study arts, but after discussing it with her mom, she opted for a more lucrative professional path. Ivone experienced this decision with sadness. She is worried that following a professional path that only ensures a good income level is conflictive with doing what she prefers and will face a life of boredom. Regarding this, the fragment below shows her perspective on pursuing a non-fulfilling career path. Fragment 36: Ivone STANZA 22 STANZA 22 Pero me resigné por el tema de que según yo But I resigned because as I think about it 117 Fragment 36 (cont’d) si estudiaba algo así aparte de quizás no poder, if I studied something like that, besides that I may not be able to do it por no tener todas las herramientas, because I don’t have all the means (skills) ya sea oportunidades, that is opportunities por no poder salir de la región lo que sea, because I can’t leave the region, or whatever it is me lleva a eso po, a la resignación, a decir it led me to this, to resignation, to [not to] say "ya, voy a estudiar artes, que es algo que me gusta y me “ok, I will study arts, that it’s something I love apasiona", and I’m passionate about” siento que no voy a tener las oportunidades, I feel I won’t have any opportunities así que voy a estudiar algo que esté más a mi alcance, so I will study something that would be more within my reach o que me de campo laboral, dinero or that gives me a job, money The fragment shows her decision between doing what she loves and what she is able to reach. She is not only concerned about the money she will not earn but also the not being able to get scholarships that would allow her to leave the region. The use of the word “resignation” implies that Ivone understands these factors as beyond her control or ability to be changed, although in the whole interview, she highlights her commitment to change her living circumstances. In addition, at the beginning of the stanza, Ivone uses the word “herramientas,” that I translate as “means,” but is literally “tools” and can also be interpreted as “skills.” The word “herramientas” seems to be describing not only her material conditions, encompassing opportunities and the possibility to leave the region, but also her talents and abilities to succeed in a career that is risky and competitive. Notably, material conditions make it very hard for adolescent girls to leave 118 the region to follow university studies, and in this case, it has effects on Ivone’s vision of the future, as well as on her self-confidence. It seems that she cannot afford to take a chance in a wrong career path, so what would lead to well-being is opting for safe path that would allow her to achieve material stability. Notes for results: Fear of not being able to leave the region: All the interviews. Memo 5: Jesse. Background Vignette Jesse is 19. She has a 2-year-old child. Jesse and her boyfriend –also her child’s parent– lived together when Jesse was pregnant. After the childbirth, Jesse moved in with her grandmother in Coyhaique and left the child with her parents in Cochrane. Jesse and her boyfriend are still together. Jesse was held back one year, and then left her regular school for a 2x1 institution -a type of institution that let student finish high school in half of the time-, ending high school at the age of 18. By the time of the interview, she was studying a technical career in a private institution in Coyhaique. After finishing the technical school, she plans to go back to Cochrane to live with her child. How Jesse describes what contributes to their well-being Jesse defines well-being as being comfortable, free, and happy. She highlights the role of love for her well-being “love, for me, is something that is well-being. It can be partner’s love, family love, a child’s love,” Consistent with her definition, Jesse highlights family and relationships as critical to her well-being while comparing it to other definitions that are more related to material factors. For example, she explains, “for some people, well-being is not just being comfortable. There are people interested in money. We need to be realistic in that sense.” In that line, Jesse describes that her family has been through different socio- economic situations, which has made her appreciate the value of tight bonds and loving relationships over income or material factors. Material factors, however, are mentioned several times 119 during the interview as something that is required for well-being, although less important than family bonds. Uncle’s sexual inappropriate behavior Framed as a critical event negatively impacting her well-being, Jesse starts the interview by talking about sexual inappropriate behavior perpetrated by her uncle. This behavior included verbal sexual advancements and pornographic images and videos the uncle sent to Jesse’s phone. Jesse highlights that this situation was painful for her since she was very attached to her uncle; she looked up to him, and shared common interests. This behavior had been going on for a long time before she disclosed it to her parents. Fragment 37: Jesse Original transcription Translation STANZA 30 STANZA 30 J: Sí, él siempre fue de allá. J: Yes, he was always from there Sí, en ese sentido, y claro, él igual, Yes. And in that sense. And of course. He still, cuando yo la pasaba mal, when I was having a hard time de repente mi tío me abrazaba, Sometimes my uncle would hug me me decía "no, hija tu eres muy bonita, tú cantas muy He would tell me “no, daughter you are bien", really pretty, you sing very well” pero después con el tiempo But then, with time se vio viendo que ya sus intenciones eran otras It was seen that his intentions were different then I: Ya I: Ok 120 Fragment 37 (cont’d) STANZA 31 STANZA 31 J: Entonces ahí ya después claro, J: So then, there, of course me quedé callada, I stayed quiet todo después, everything after todo el proceso de cuando quedé embarazada all the process of me getting pregnant pasó todo esto igual, all this happened too entonces cuando claro, so, when, of course salieron a la luz las dos cosas, both things came to light el embarazo y lo de mi tío, the pregnancy and [the matter] of my uncle en cierto modo el embarazo in a way the pregnancy no fue para nada molestia para mis papás, wasn’t at all a bother for my parents ni para mi mamá, nada, not for my mom, nothing fue lo de mi tío el mayor problema. it was [the matter] of my uncle the biggest problem This fragment shows a very confusing discursive structure. Some sentences demonstrate disorganized thoughts –e.g., “so then, there, of course”– showing difficulties in communicating the message. In this fragment, I identify four codes. Framed as a situation of emotional comfort, the phrase “no, daughter, you are very beautiful, you sing very well” merges age, physical appearance, and a personal connection. To be called “daughter” is very common in Chile, particularly from older people to younger people, even among people who are not related to each other. I identify this as a community cultural value. It also immediately establishes a hierarchical relationship based on age difference which I coded as positionality. Jesse said he would use the word “bonita” (“beautiful”), 121 which does not have an explicit sexual connotation and is family appropriate, although ambiguous in the mentioned context. And finally, “you sing very well” establishes a personal connection with the uncle, who is a singer. All this happens within a context of family trust, in which she feels she can show herself emotionally vulnerable (“when I was having a hard time”), denoting physical and emotional intimacy that was seen as inadequate later. The code roles and social expectations refer to the expected behavior, and the roles played in front of others. In this case, the phrase talks about how others see Jesse and how she presents herself –being beautiful and singing very well–. In addition, she positioned herself as passive in front of her uncle, letting him hug her and tell her things about her looks. Next, I used the same code when Jesse says, “of course, I stayed quiet,” referring to a common behavior when facing sexual harassment. At the end of the fragment, there is a reflection about the outcome of the situation, in which Jesse compared her pregnancy and the disclosure of the sexual harassment in terms of the way it impacted her parents. Lastly, the pregnancy and the harassment are described as a “bother” to her parents, which suggests that she was at least partially blaming herself for what happened. Then, instead of saying that she disclosed both things, she used the expression “came to light,” deleting herself and her actions from the social practice, which is possibly linked to feeling guilty about bothering her parents. Interestingly, the harassment passed as regular family interaction. Jesse describes being treated this way by her uncle as a regular thing, and after some time realizing that it was inappropriate (“it was seen that his intentions were different”). I interpret the use of the passive voice and the made-up expression “se vio viendo” -literally “it was seen seeing”- as a way to manifest it was clearly visible by that time, removing any doubts about the uncle’s intentions of sexual advancements. The harassment is kept secret. In that regard, Jesse only states that “of course, I kept quiet,” suggesting that it was very obvious that it should be a secret. Her motivations to remain silent 122 are probably related to a cultural context in which these abuses are overlooked, and girls’ accusations are disbelieved. This is also commented on later in the interview, also related to her pregnancy. In the fragment, familism – understood as the critical importance given to extended family, typical of Latin American cultures (Gissi et al., 2002)– is noticeable in the importance Jesse accorded to her parents’ reactions and opinions, as well as the close relationship with her uncle who can provide emotional comfort. Familism has been stated in research as a protective factor and social resource for Latina adolescents (Ohlhaver, 2011), fostering their well-being. The fragment partially illustrates how the family is considered a central source of social support and a positive contributor to well-being. On the other hand, Latin American feminists have pointed out that familism is firmly attached to traditional values that intensify gender roles (de Campos & Bernardes, 2019; Puyana Villamizar, 2005), sustaining harmful ideologies as well as public policies that are oppressive to women. In the same fragment, the harassment is sustained in a close relationship with extended family, as well as in gender roles that describe women as responsible for de-escalating conflict and tension within the family (Chemaly, 2018). This is also mentioned in a different fragment in which Jesse explains that she remains silent to avoid her boyfriend getting into a fight with her uncle – “STANZA 37, “if he (boyfriend) knows about this, it can create a problem because he doesn’t react good, he has had the intention of punching him (uncle) several times and until now.” In short, this fragment shows that familism does not have a straightforward relationship with well-being. It is simultaneously related to protection, fear of parent’s reaction, emotional comfort, social support, and uncle’s inappropriate behavior, being both a protective factor for well-being and a risk factor. This nuanced relationship is closely related to Jesse’s positionality as an adolescent girl and the community culture. 123 Pregnancy Also relevant in this interview are several episodes that Jesse experienced while pregnant that significantly influenced her well-being. Jesse describes how people treated her differently and made a number of assumptions during her pregnancy. While pregnant, Jesse lost any credibility and was mistreated by the community. In her interview, she said that people spread rumors and told lies about the baby's dad, among others. This not only hurt her feelings and was related to stress and anger but also made her believe that no one was going to believe in her word, affecting her position in the community. In that line, the following fragment is connected to the uncle’s inappropriate behavior. During the pregnancy, Jesse was afraid that her uncle could harm the baby or his father, but when she went to the police, they did nothing. In this fragment, Jesse reflects and offers an explanation about why the police did not defend her. Fragment 38: Jesse STANZA 39 STANZA 39 Pero en ese sentido si los carabineros, But in that sense, yes, the police pucha uno decía igual, uno se decepciona de la ley de well, one would say, one can be disappointed of Chile, Chilean law de todo, porque igual la denuncia lleva dos años, of everything because the accusation has two years now ¿Qué pasa si me hubiera atacado embarazada? What if he would attack me while I was pregnant? que hubiera pasado y todo. What would happen, and everything "No, es que él es una buena persona" “No, he is a good person” porque ya la tienen en nombre destacado porque canta, Because they have him as a remarkable name, because he sings 124 Fragment 38 (cont’d) en los rodeos, en los festivales, at rodeos, and fests es una persona súper intachable, He is blameless nadie podría pensar mal de él No one would think bad of him STANZA 40 STANZA 40 I: Qué lata I: I’m sorry J: Entonces, ¿A quién le van a creer? J: So, who are they going to believe? ¿A la niñita embarazada que se quedó embarazada The pregnant girl who got pregnant while young joven por joder? just for fun? ¿O al hombre intachable? Que la mayoría de la gente Or the unimpeachable (blameless) men? le va a creer a él Everyone is going to believe him I: Sí I: Yeah J: Yo le puedo contar mi historia y me van a decir J: I can tell my story, and they would say "no, la cabrita no sé, suelta" “no, I don’t know, the wild girl.” "la cabrita joven, que quedó embarazada, que andaba “the young girl, that got pregnant, that was hinchando" troubling” "que andaba provocando" “that was provoking” In this fragment, Jesse describes how her positionality as a pregnant girl acted as a barrier to finding the support she needed from the police. This lack of support disappointed her and affected her opinion about Chilean institutions in general. In addition, the phrase “J: So, who are they going to believe to? The pregnant girl who got pregnant while young just for fun? Or to the unimpeachable (blameless) men? Everyone is going to believe him” frames how pregnant girls are deemed irresponsible and careless and sets an opposition between her and an adult man, who seems to have a prominent role in the community. The utterance “Everyone is going to believe him” extends this disbelief to the whole 125 community as if no one was going to believe her version of the story. In the end, she explains how she believed that others saw her and what would happen if she said anything. This claim of people not believing in her version, disregarding her accusations, or ignoring her requests for help were supported by several events that she commented on. For example, once, Jesse was bitten by a dog while pregnant, and when she asked the police to do something, they ignored her. Jesse interpreted the lack of help as a reflection of her position in the community as inferior compared to the dog’s owner –a member of the military–. In the same line, Jesse was mistreated by a teacher because she was pregnant (Stanza 104). Fragment 39: Jesse STANZA 104 STANZA 104 J: Siempre decía eso, decía "qué más le voy a decir... J: He [teacher] always said that. He said “what else I would tell her… le digo a mi señora que se siente y se sienta", I would tell my wife to sit down, and she will” una cosa así. O Things like that. Or "le digo a mi señora que me tenga el té", “I say to my wife to have tea for me” o "para eso no más sirve". Or “that’s the only thing she is useful for” Y a mí una vez ese profesor, And once, that teacher, to me no tiene idea que estoy estudiando ingeniería, He has no clue that I’m studying engineering no tiene idea cómo me va, me dijo: He has no clue about how I’m going. He told me "tú no vas a llegar a ningún lado", “you are not going anywhere” dijo, "así, embarazada" me lo dijo, He said, “like that, pregnant”, he told me "¿Qué vas a hacer?", dijo, “What are you going to do?”, he said, "va a terminar barriendo calles, “you will end swiping streets, 126 Fragment 39 (cont’d) para lo único que sirve". that’s the only thing you are good at” Hasta que mi papá un día se lo fue a agarrar Until one day, my dad went for him I: Ya I: Ok The fragment starts with Jesse saying how the teacher used to talk about her wife, making fun of her and diminishing her value (“that’s the only thing she is useful for”), displaying a clear misogynistic attitude. This start serves to frame how the teacher treated Jesse, exposing that the teacher was offensive to all women, including her wife, and in addition, he was rude to Jesse because she was pregnant. In the fragment, Jesse explains how her pregnancy is seen by the teacher as lack of future, intelligence, and value. She felt helpless about these attacks and end up asking her dad to interfere. Consistent with her definition, Jesse described being harmed by feeling unsupported and unloved during vulnerable times. The interview describes several moments in which she feels members of her family, community, or school mistreated her or hurt her feelings. On the other hand, she highlights feeling loved, respected, and cared about by her boyfriend, child, parents, and teachers. She expressed having a great sense of responsibility for them and talked about them as central to her well-being. Notes for results: Other interviews that talk about institutions that do not respect them: Gema, Tessa Other themes in this interview: bullying (also in Gema and Kathy), obstetric violence. To compare: Gema reacts with depression, Jesse with violence. 127 Memo 6: Joy. Background vignette Joy is 19. She grew up in Valdivia and moved to Coyhaique when she started high school. She currently lives with her dad and his family. Her mother passed away when she was nine years old. Her mother and father met at a party, and she got pregnant. They were together for a short period, and then they separated. Her mother had her when she was 45. Joy’s mother was warned that Joy might have health issues because of her age, so, during Joy’s infancy, the mother interpreted anything as a symptom of a disease, giving Joy several types of medicines. As a result, Joy’s childhood was marked by feeling always doped. Joy’s mother had a previous relationship with a violent man, with whom she had three children, all of them many years older than Joy and still living in Valdivia. The mother had alcoholism and used to party a lot, often showing violent behaviors and getting into fights. After going to one of those parties, accompanied by Joy’s sister, she was found floating on a river, dead in unclear circumstances. Joy and her siblings believe she was killed in a situation that got out of control, but the investigation never concluded. The news was on the local media, so everyone knew about it in Joy’s town. Joy’s father and mother had a complicated relationship, and the father fought for custody. After some incidents related to the mother’s alcoholism, the father took Joy and lived with her for a year. The mother accused him of kidnapping, and Joy returned to her mother’s. The mother died about a year after that. Joy then lived in her grandma’s house with cousins and aunts. The dad met another woman who moved to Coyhaique, and he followed her there, starting a new family. Joy stayed at her grandma’s. 128 Because everyone knew about her mom’s death, Joy was treated differently by family members, peers, and teachers. The pity annoyed her, and she felt lonely and misunderstood. She tried to commit suicide once and went to therapy for several years. She also misbehaved at school and was expelled from three schools. She then moved to Coyhaique with her dad for high school, looking to start over in a new town where no one knew her. She went to a public school, earned good grades, was class president, had a good relationship with teachers and school authorities, and showed leadership and optimism. She did not tell anyone about her previous history. After finishing school, she studied a technical career in administration and started working in a bank. Earning her own money, she moved to her own place by the age of 18, and then her boyfriend moved in with her for some months. After some problems, they decided to stop living together. Joy stayed in the house but eventually felt lonely and decided to go back to her dad’s house. How Joy describes what contributes to well-being Joy understands well-being as being able to be independent, self-sufficient, and love oneself. She believes that being economically independent and stable is fundamental for her well-being. In addition, she said to feel comfortable in safe spaces that allow her to be herself, including the “bad parts,” and being accepted as she is, are necessary conditions for her well-being. A big topic of the interview was trusting others and her feelings of loneliness. For Joy, being independent is not only a material thing but also a relational one. She thinks that romantic relationships and friendships that create dependency are toxic and actively avoids them. That has meant that her social circle is tiny and that she had few significant relationships in her life. In that sense, Joy has a theoretical idea of what well-being should look like and tries to live her life accordingly, although without actually experiencing well-being. On the contrary, Joy often feels lonely and sad. 129 Mother’s death and social reactions In Joy’s words, her mother’s death was not as terrible as the people’s reaction afterward. Joy believed that her mother was sick of alcoholism, traumatized by violence, and full of guilt that she was too old for being her mother and incapable of protecting Joy’s siblings from violence. Therefore, she interpreted her mother’s death as she would be able to get some rest after a very hard life. However, people around her were expecting that she should be devastated, and that assumption lasted for years. Fragment 40: Joy STANZA 79 STANZA 79 J: sí, entonces después cuando alguien me hablaba J: Yes, so after, when someone talked to me y me decía o se murió tu mamá And told me oh, your mom is dead ahí empecé a sentir la tristeza antes no. That’s when I started feeling sad, not before pero cuando tanta gente te dice But when so many people tell you oye murió tu mamá qué triste “Hey your mom died, how sad” todo un año 2 años es heavy. For a year, for two years, that is heavy. In stanza 79, Joy maintained that her sadness resulted from people’s expectations. With the phrase “when so many people tell you “Hey, your mom died, how sad” for a year, for two years, that is heavy.” Chileans use the word “heavy” to talk about really serious situations, strongly impacting people. In that line, Joy evaluates the reaction of the people around her as not only inadequate but harmful. It literally made her feel sad. The use of the utterance “when so many people tell you” is a way to explain her situation was overwhelming. The addition “for a year, for two years” describes that this was going on for a very long time. This fragment shows how damaging people’s assumptions and social expectation were for Joy. 130 In her previous school, Joy felt that people made comments behind her back, talked about her mother’s death all the time around her, and felt sorry for her, which seriously affected her daily life. One of them was that some teachers at her previous school keep looking for signs of trauma in her ordinary behavior. For example, the art teacher interpreted her drawings, and the music teacher said she was isolated from her classmates. They talked to her psychologist, saying that she was not ok. Although she was in treatment and felt fine, Joy thought that people around her were constantly pointing her out and decided to drop activities and avoid people. Fragment 41: Joy STANZA 80 STANZA 80 tú estás tratando de sanarte, de sanar You are trying to heal yourself, to heal pero la gente con sus comentarios But people with their comments te hace retroceder un montón. They make you go backwards a lot yo me levantaba todos los días I woke up everyday hoy día así hoy día tengo esto. I have this today, I have this yo estaba en muchos talleres I was in so many activities decía hoy día voy a esta parte And I was like “today I have to go to this” a esta parte a esta parte To this, to this STANZA 81 STANZA 81 me decían “oye cómo estái tú”, And they were like “how are you?” O yo decían “yo vivo con mi abuela” “y tu m131amá”, Or I say “I live with my grandma” “and your mom? “No mi 131mamá no está”, “y porque no está”, “no, my mom is not here” “why she isn’t here?” “no porque no está”. “because she is not” 131 Fragment 41 (cont’d) y alguien le decía al oído la otra persona And they would whisper in their ear no es que su 132ama murió. “her mom died” es la que encontraron en el río “is the one that was found on the river” entonces todo mi trabajo del día… So all my work of the day… As this fragment explains, people around her kept talking about her mother’s death against her wishes. Following the previous stanza, this fragment illustrates how the community reaction impeded her well-being, summarized in the phrase “you are trying to heal yourself, to heal. But people with their comment. They make you go backward a lot”. Joy interpreted signs of interest and being worried as a lack of empathy and support within a community that was constantly gossiping and judging her mother and herself. The phrase “is the one that was found on the river” suggests that she felt everyone else knew about what happened, and the episode was publicly commented. The end of the fragment “so all my work of the day…” described that her efforts to heal were useless in a damaging environment. The whole situation impacted her to the point of wanting to take her own life. After a suicide attempt, she saw her family so worried that she dropped the idea. She continued therapy with great success and left for Coyhaique, where she got the opportunity to have a new life, with none knowing her. This fresh start was very important for her healing process. She decided to write her own story, in which she could be focused on the good things that she had instead of only the terrible episodes of her life. About that, she explained: Fragment 42: Joy STANZA 91 STANZA 91 J: sí era bueno porque podría reivindicar J: yes, it was good because I could claim y contar la historia que yo quisiera and tell the story I wanted to tell 132 Fragment 42 (cont’d) podía hasta mentir sobre mi vida I can even lie about my life y nadie me iba a cuestionar And no one would question me I: y lo hiciste? I: Did you? J: sí en los episodios donde la gente me miraba mal J: yes, and when people would look at me wrong yo en mi cabeza me volví una tipa aguerrida, I imagined myself as someone fierce, no me importa que me mirarán, I didn’t care they were looking at me enmendé mi propia historia I amended my own story y la conté a mi manera. And told it my way The fragment shows an exercise of healing and agency. The word “reividicar” that I translated as “claim” evokes the reclamation of her life. In that sense, the people’s comments and reactions in her previous town had taken away her story. The phrase “I mended my own story and told it my way” is a way to confirm that she was able to be in control of what was told about her and able to actually own her life. This possibility of reclamation was described as fundamental for her well-being. The community reactions were so damaging that she needed to move out of the city and lie to protect herself. The possibility of telling lies that no one would be able to discover was promising for her healing process. As she explains, this helped her be fierce and strong but also made her distrust people around her. Autonomy Joy is very interested in being an autonomous person. She believes being able to survive by herself without needing anyone else is a way to achieve well-being because it contributes to her 133 feelings of self-esteem and gives her confidence in her own skills. Joy maintained that her focus on being independent came from her mom, who taught her to be self-sufficient since she was little. During her time living by herself, Joy sometimes felt sad and did not want to do regular things, like preparing a meal or heating the house. Once, she needed to chop wood for her furnace but was exhausted after work, so she cried on the floor for hours, freezing. At that point, she remembered her mother and how she had taught her to be independent, which comforted her and gave her strength. In that regard, she explained that her mom was a fierce woman who fought against depression and alcoholism for several years, never gave up, and tried to transmit that strength to her. Fragment 43: Joy STANZA 32 STANZA 32 me enseñó a vivir sola prácticamente She taught me how to live by myself, practically muy chica además que ella también tenía una depresión Since I was very young, and also, she also had a de años cachai? long history of depression, you understand? porque ella se había casado vivía en el campo Because she was married, living in the countryside uno de mis hermanos tuvo cáncer One of my brothers had cancer entonces la depresión la consumía So the depression was consuming her y ella bebía bastante a pesar de todo eso ella igual And she drank a lot, and despite all of that she still como qué se enfocaba en enseñarme a mí a ser Like she was focused on teaching me to be independiente independent a ser fuerte To be strong, a si le iba mal a ella no deprimirme por eso. To not be depressed if things did not work for her. 134 The fragment describes the mother as actively trying to teach Joy to be self-sufficient, in opposition to the phrases “she also had depression for several years” and “she drank a lot.” These phrases suggest that although the mother was not in a condition to teach her how to be self-sufficient, she did it anyway. However, it sounds like because of her depression and the drinking problem, it is likely that Joy had to take care of herself anyway. Almost at the end of the fragment, Joy mentions “like she was focused…” which can suggest that this was Joy’s interpretation as if through letting her do things by herself, she was trying to teach her to be strong and independent. The reflection that closes the fragment talks about optimism against adversity: “To not be depressed if things did not work for her.”. Interestingly, the phrase literally says that Joy would not be depressed if things went wrong for her mom. In Chile, to say “si le iba mal” is normally used regarding work settings and money issues. If things go wrong it often means that someone is not getting a job, doing a bad business, or not earning enough money. It could be the case that Joy is saying that she had also learned not to be depressed if there were economic issues. Although this can seem contradictory to her own definition of well-being, in which she says she believes that material stability is a required condition for achieving it, it may be pointing out that even in economic adversity, one needs to maintain optimism and move forward. In that sense, Joy’s opinion regarding material factors is divided: on the one hand, she recognizes the importance of counting on material stability and making decisions to achieve it. On the other, she feels she still can reach well-being if she does not let herself be affected too much by material instability. Regarding the economic matter, Joy’s work allows her to have small expenses. When Joy moved to live alone, her material conditions were not very stable. She lived in a small cabin, with a bed and her clothes as her only belongings. She describes herself as very responsible with money and argues that when people are in debt, they are “depressed, sad, worried, and jittery,” as she mentioned 135 in another stanza. With that, Joy confirms that there is a minimum of stability that is necessary for well-being. Joy was able to live by herself without incurring in any doubts. However, her self-image of being an autonomous and independent person was threatened when she needed to return to her dad’s home. She was living alone for a year and a half but felt it should have been a longer period. About that, Joy explains that her dad has not been supportive of her decisions, especially those related to her autonomy. Fragment 44: Joy STANZA 17 STANZA 17 Mi papá siempre tiene la costumbre My dad is used to de abolir mis decisiones. countering my decisions I: qué significa abolir mis decisiones What do you mean “abolish” my decisions J: Como que yo tomo una decisión J: Like if I make a decision y él es como “sabes qué tu decisión está errónea, no”. He is like “you know, your decision is wrong, no” No deja ni que yo me equivoque siquiera. He doesn’t even let me make a mistake El es como no, es intransigente con eso. He is like no, he is uncompromising with that Pero esto es importante para mi, But this is important for me porque yo decidí por mi, Because I decided for me y decidí cuidarme a mi por un año sola. I decided to take care of myself for one year Entonces para mi fue una etapa súper importante And that was a very important stage for me The fragment describes Joy feeling that her dad does not believe in her ability to make good decisions. The utterance “he doesn’t even let me make a mistake” describes she would like to be 136 supported in her decisions, even when the decision is not right. That would be a gesture of trust and respect. The second part of the fragment, starting with “but this is important for me…” reflects that she feels her dad does not understand the rationale of her decision. Being autonomous has been linked to well-being, and it is a concept grounded on the relationship with others. In a study done with Chilean adolescents and their parents, researchers found that both parents and children understand autonomy as a multidimensional concept that interconnects self-sufficiency, ability to make decisions, and responsibility (Martínez et al., 2014). The same study explains that autonomy refers to behaviors as well as states of self-evaluation and that to be able to make their own decisions, adolescents need to be seen as mature enough by their parents. In other words, the study shows that autonomy is something that adolescents achieve in relationships with their parents: they reach it when they self-evaluate as capable and also are seen as capable by their parents. The study also found that parents from low socioeconomic status tend to be more authoritative with their children (Martínez et al., 2014), therefore granting less autonomy. In Joy’s case, her dad does not act as though he sees her as capable of making her own choices. It seems very likely that gender has an impact on the low level of autonomy that Joy’s dad has granted. For instance, Joy’s dad told her she could go back to live in the house, but under his roof, she would have a curfew –she needs to come back no later than 12:30– and could not stay over at her boyfriend’s place. This is regardless of the fact that Joy had reached age majority, lived by herself for a year and a half, and her boyfriend also lived with her for a few months. Joy accepted these rules without hesitation or complaint, although they seem to be signs of mistrust or fearing that Joy may get pregnant. In this case, it is very unlikely that Joy’s dad was worried about teen pregnancy since Joy is almost finishing her education and has a stable job. He may probably be worried she is not married, which reflects cultural values. 137 Not wanting children Joy’s life history has a large impact on how she thinks about what a good life looks like. One important aspect of her idea of the future is not wanting to have any children. Joy has made this decision with sadness. She likes kids but considers herself unfit for being a mother, and she also does not trust she would have a committed partner to raise the child with her. Fragment 45: Joy STANZA 184 STANZA 184 I: y tú no quieres tener hijos I: and you don’t want kids J: no. sabes por qué es por ese temor. J: no. You know why? Because of that fear el temor a tener que quedarme sola The fear of needing to be by myself para criar a alguien. To raise someone sí para mí me considero una persona fuerte I believe I’m a strong person pero fuerte por mí. But strong for myself no podría ser fuerte por alguien más I couldn’t be strong for someone else verla llorar yo creo que me frustraría mucho. If I see them cry, I would be so frustrated STANZA 185 STANZA 185 en vez de poder ver la solución me quedaría ahí Instead of seeing a solution, I would stay there me sentaría a llorar con la guagua quedarme ahí. I would sit there and cry with the baby entonces no me veo con una guagua So, I don’t see myself with a baby yo creo que hay que ser fuerte para eso. I think you need to be strong for that Y yo lamentablemente And I, sadly no tengo la certeza I’m not certain que la persona que amo me vaya a amar para siempre that the person I love would love me forever y como no se tiene esa certeza and without that certainty 138 Fragment 45 (cont’d) no puedes quedarte a tener algo para siempre tampoco. you can’t stay and have something that is forever o sea yo no sé si algún día llego a cambiar de opinión, I mean, I don’t know if I will change my mind one day genial pero lo que yo quiero para mí no es eso but that is not what I want for me In this reflection, Joy’s opinion on being a strong person is contradictory. She literally said both; she is a strong person – “I believe I’m a strong person”– and that she is not – “I think you need to be strong for that”–. Being strong is a recurrent topic of the interview. As Joy mentioned in another fragment commented above, she thinks she was raised to be strong. The phrase “Instead of seeing a solution, I would stay there, I would sit there and cry with the baby” is used as an opposition of being strong, as if being sad or depressed were signs of weakness. This can be interpreted as a residue of previous depression, a fear of relapsing if big changes happen in her life, threatening a precarious balance. The example used, “If I see them cry, I would be so frustrated,” refers to a natural and unavoidable situation with a baby. Because it is expected that a baby cries, and she would not tolerate that crying, then she cannot be a mother. Hence, having a baby would be a threat to her well-being, as it would make her sad and frustrated. A second important point of this fragment is that Joy believes that in case of being pregnant, the father would not be with her to raise the child. Joy feels insecure about romantic relationships, reflected in the sentence, “And I, sadly, I’m not certain that the person I love would love me forever.” I interpret this as a projection of her parents’ history, which is confirmed in stanzas later, in which she described how traumatic it was for her to be in the middle of a broken relationship. She added the example of her boyfriend’s case. He had a child, needed to work to provide for his son, could not 139 study in the university, ended separating from the mother, currently works too much in a low-paid job, and feels guilty and sad about not having enough time for his son. These reflections are framed as how Joy imagines having a good life in the future. As shown in the fragments, Joy believes that needing to take care of a child would be detrimental to her well- being. In addition, the image of not being strong enough and not being loved enough to be a mother is also experienced with sadness. Although described as a personal decision, the reflection shows as if these were conditions out of her control. Notes for results: Being harassed on the street. Combine with Cami, Jesse, Ivone. Joy’s not wanting to have a child can serve as the opposite of the interviews that talk about taking care of others: Gema, Antonia, Jesse, Kathy. Memo 7: Kathy. Background Vignette Kathy is 18. She lives with her parents and brother, who is two years older. The whole family has a close relationship. She also has a boyfriend. She described her relationship as caring and loving. Kathy switched school after being constantly bullied. Because of bullying, she stopped attending in 8th grade and was retained in school for two years. She wanted to study medicine in Santiago, although her family insisted that she should follow a career in arts. Kathy is Mapuche – indigenous people from the south of the country–. She did not know that until recently when her mother told her she was able to apply to an indigenous fellowship for university studies. She also plans to get a house from the government and use the money to pay for her university studies. How Kathy describes what contributes to their well-being Kathy’s definition of well-being is to be safe and relaxed. In Kathy’s opinion, experiencing well-being is mostly a decision. She compared herself to other people and recognized her as 140 optimistic and able to face adversity without taking it too seriously, avoiding feeling sad or worried. Consistently, being in control and exercising her agency are common themes in her interview. Similar to what is often described by the literature on well-being, Kathy’s approach to well-being is mostly individualistic. Economic responsibility Kathy’s life has been marked by poverty. Her mom was 14 when Kathy`s brother was born and 16 when she was born. Her dad was only three years older than her mom. Her mom stayed at home, and her dad had three different jobs to maintain the family. The current family situation is much more stable, but Kathy feels she has an economic responsibility to the family. She has found that contributing to the household's economy makes her feel proud and increases her self- confidence and self-esteem. She explained in detail how she started to save money and make small investments to achieve financial goals. She then uses that money to cover her expenses –buying clothes, having pocket money– and making presents for her family –e.g., she bought a phone for her mom. Importantly, she has achieved all her goals so far, which have given her a sense of possibility. She believes that she can do whatever she sets her mind to. In Kathy’s opinion, her sense of responsibility to their family’s economic situation results from her relationships with her parents. She highlights having a close relationship and open communication with both parents, including them talking about financial issues often. Research on well-being and poverty has shown that in low-income families, parents who involve their children in economic matters need to balance between over and under involvement to protect their well-being (Main, 2017). These studies have shown that an incorrect level of involvement is significantly associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. In Kathy’s case, the level of involvement may have been a reason for lower levels of subjective well-being some years ago, as illustrated in stanza 141 92, but then it had an opposite effect, including higher self-esteem and self-confidence –both factors often related to higher levels of subjective well-being–. Fragment 46: Kathy STANZA 92 STANZA 92 Como mi papá nos contaba Because my dad used to tell us que cuando él era más joven, that when he was younger él no siempre tenía dinero he didn’t always have money para lo que queríamos, for the things we wanted entonces eso me hizo reflexionar that made me reflect y estuve muchos años intentando sacar, como dos años, and I spent many years trying to get, like two years estuve intentando, tres años, trying to, three years, pensar en cómo yo podía ayudar en eso think how I was able to help with it I: Te preocupaste I: you were worried K: Sí K: yes The concern provoked by parental stress is central to this fragment. The lines “that when he was younger, he didn’t always have money,” in addition to the number of years she spent thinking on the topic, suggest that the dad started making this type of comment when Kathy was about 13. As Kathy explained in the interview, she and her brother were unaware of their financial stress before this age, constantly asking for things and complaining about not having enough toys. Kathy regretted this behavior and wanted to compensate her parents, although it seems like the stress level was not as high as when she was little. In addition, the fragment shows that looking for ways to contribute with money was not suggested, asked, or imposed, but a personal decision that she made on her own. 142 The willingness to contribute and not be an economic burden also made Kathy apply for fellowships that would help her finish school and cover her university expenses. Because fellowships depend on grades, Kathy was always vigilant about her academic performance. In that line, to have a poor grade is a source of distress for Kathy. Fragment 47: Kathy STANZA 9 STANZA 9 K: Depende, ahora no tengo clases, K: It depends, now I don’t have class están en paro, pero lo normalmente, because of the teachers’ stroke, but normally cuando estamos en clases, when we are in class estoy los cinco días de clases, I’m five days in class y soy alguien que se preocupa mucho de sus notas, and I’m someone who is very worried about her grades y mis profesores lo saben. and my teachers know this O sea, yo me siento muy mal I mean, I feel really bad en mi estado de ánimo my mood cuando me saco por ejemplo un cuatro, o un cinco when I get a four, or a five I: Ya I; Ok K: Porque me interesa mucho lo del futuro. K: Because I really care about future Por ejemplo, el tema de las becas, todo eso fellowships and all that As fragment above shows, despite Kathy describes well-being as “a decision”, she also recognizes that other things condition well-being. In this case, not having good grades is directly related to lower well-being. In terms of social practices, Kathy maintained good academic performance and consistent school attendance because these are required conditions for university fellowships. The phrase “I’m someone who is very worried about her grades” suggests that Kathy considers 143 her interest in having good grades as something that can be deemed part of her personality or identity. The phrase “and my teachers know this” may denote that Kathy feels she fulfills the social expectations of being a good student. Impacts of bullying Kathy suffered bullying in her previous school. She was physically attacked by classmates and consistently insulted because of her looks. They threw food in her hair, pushed her, and insulted her. During class, she acted as she was sleeping. The school authorities and teachers did not act to stop the bullying. Some teachers hid her in their offices during breaks and also helped her wash her hair. Studies on gender and bullying show that girls and boys engage in bullying motivated by different things (McClanahan et al., 2015). In Kathy’s case, it seemed to have no reason, as stanza 21 shows, although she says in a different fragment that it was because they say she was fat. Kathy stopped attending classes and was retained for two years in 8th grade. At the age of 14, she switched schools to avoid bullying. However, one of the girls that bullied her started harassing her brother. The brother did not want to be on the street and was constantly scared. He started cutting himself and hiding knives and ropes in his room. Kathy reflects that, during the time she was being bullied, she never thought about taking her own life but was sure that her brother did not want to live anymore. Stanza 30 describes how the brother’s situation was at home. Fragment 48: Kathy STANZA 30 STANZA 30 I: Y eso, ¿cómo te sentiste tú? I: How did you feel? K: Yo tuve que ver eso K: I had to see that I: ¿Y qué hizo? I: What did he do? K: Siempre tenía que subir a su pieza, K: I always had to go up, to his room que mi hermano dormía en el segundo piso My brother sleeps in the second floor 144 Fragment 48 (cont’d) I: Y es hermano más grande que tú I: And that brother is older K: Sí, mi hermano yo tengo 18 y él tiene, K: Yes, my brother, I’m 18, he is él siempre me lleva por dos años, He is always two years older él es mayor que yo, y no, He is older, and no… siempre tuve que, I always had to con mi mamá lo tuvimos que cuidar, Me and my mom, we had to take care of him en el sentido de... In the sense of… I: Y él estaba tan preocupado que se quiso hacer algo I: He was so worried that he wanted to harm himself The fragment shows Kathy’s mother and herself were in charge of his care. This meant that they needed to constantly watch him so he would not find a chance of hurting himself. In the fragment, Kathy refers to the fact he is her older brother, implying that taking care of him was not her position. The phrase “I had to see that” suggests that Kathy interpreted the situation as something that should not be happening to her, as it was not appropriate for a younger sister to see her brother like this. Considering the gravity of the situation, Kathy’s parents denounced the girl to the police. That finally stopped the bullying. Several social practices are networked, affecting Kathy’s well-being. First, bullying affected Kathy emotionally, which directly affected her academic performance. Secondly, lack of institutional support provoked despair in Kathy and her family. As Kathy referred to in a different fragment, she was told to talk to adults and trust them, but when she did, nothing happened. This impacted her confidence in the system and significant adults. Third, it affected Kathy’s brother, and with that to the rest of the family indirectly. In Kathy’s interpretation, the impacts of bullying on her brother 145 provoked changes in her and her mother’s daily lives, affecting their routines and becoming worried and anxious that something may happen to the brother. From a gender perspective, it has been clearly stated that taking care of others is a gendered task since girls often assume it in Latin American contexts (Estupiñán Aponte, 2014). The phrase “Me and my mom, we had to take care of him” describes a social expectation assumed by Kathy and her mom as an obligation. In that sense, the role of caring is accepted as natural and not questioned by Kathy. Therefore, Kathy did not say how needing to take care of her brother affects her well-being, although she mentioned it as things that impeded her well-being. The importance given to the family as fundamental for well-being Family plays a critical role in Kathy’s interview. In many ways, her well-being was defined by having an open and close relationship with her parents. She feels supported and loved by her parents and is proud to trust them with her problems. The following fragment is about the meaning of family for Kathy. She used to date a guy who did not want to introduce her to his family. Kathy interpreted this as he did not care for her and was ashamed of being her boyfriend. On the contrary, Kathy’s new boyfriend introduced her to her nuclear and extended family, making her feel accepted and loved. Fragment 49: Kathy STANZA 68 STANZA 68 I: Él te apoyo igual, I: He supported you then, y ya llevan harto juntos, And you have been together for a long time now es distinto eso, esa relación. Qué bueno That’s different, that relationship. I’m glad. K: Él me presentó, K: He introduced me, bueno ahí puse familia, well, I wrote family there porque él me presentó a su familia completa because he introduced me his whole family 146 Fragment 49 (cont’d) I: Y eso era importante para ti I: and that was important for you K: Sí, porque nunca, K: yes, because, es decir no conocía ni a la mamá, I mean, I didn’t even know her mother para mí conocer a los abuelos, to me, meeting his grandparents abuelas, era otro nivel. grandmothers, it was a whole other level. The fragment is based on community cultural values in which meeting someone’s family is a regular thing. There is nothing extraordinary in meeting the family of a significant other. The phrase “to me, meeting his grandparents, grandmothers, it was a whole other level” is an interesting figure of speech that demonstrates that this was the bare minimum that the previous boyfriend was not willing to give. This fragment is mentioned in the context of things that contribute to her well-being. Through this action, Kathy’s boyfriend fully accepted her and invited her to be part of his world. She highlighted this aspect of her relationship, which also gave her confidence in her ability to start detecting red flags in abusive relationships. Regarding this, the previous boyfriend did not introduce her to his family and did not want to be seen in public with her and then dumped her after having sex for the first time. During the interview, Kathy cried while talking about her first-time having sex, which happened without her consent, showing clear signs of trauma. Fragment 50: Kathy STANZA 64 STANZA 64 I: Pero... I: But… K: Por más que le dijera que pare, K: Even when I told him to stop, yo no sabía si ellos me iban a entender, I wasn’t sure that they would understand me 147 Fragment 50 (cont’d) porque yo decía que pare, Because I told him to stop pero igual en parte fue consentido, But it was partially consented pero lo de ella no But not for her I: Pero yo creo que eso no es consentimiento I: But I don’t think that was consented K: En parte K: Partially I: Pero está bien, I: It’s ok entiendo lo que dices, I understand your point porque tú no estabas segura si tu mamá te iba a apañar Because you weren’t sure if your mom was going to support you Stanza 64 shows that the traumatic event was not isolated from the family. The phrase “I wasn’t sure if they will understand me” is referred to the parents, implying that she was not sure if the parents would believe that she tried to stop the boyfriend and refused to have sex with him. Besides having normalized rape, this fragment shows how Kathy believed that her parents might be rejecting her if she had sex, losing her place in the family. In the same vein, she did not tell her parents that this event happened, but she did tell them that she was having sex and wanted to go to the doctor, and when I asked how she felt about it, she said she was scared and was waiting for her parents to be upset about it. These anticipations were based on the idea that having sex was wrong and that she was stepping out of the expected behavior, which would probably have consequences. Similarly, the fragment shows that she believed there are reasons to feel she can be blamed for being raped, as she “partially consented” to the sex. This reflection can be seen as a manifestation of internalized machismo. Regarding disclosing she was having sex, different from her expectations, Kathy was supported and understood by her parents. This was mentioned as contributing to her well-being, feeling relieved and unconditionally loved. 148 Notes for results: Compare parental support to Ivone’s case. Add literature on familism from Jesse’s memo. Memo 8: Princess Kim Background Vignette Princess Kim is 17. She is in her last year of school. She lives with her mom, brother, and her cat. During the interview, Princess Kim was deeply stressed and anxious, which made her cry often and also preferred to skip several questions that made her feel uncomfortable or sad. Most of the interview was about avoiding talking about her future and describing K-Pop singers and dancing routines that made her feel distracted and contribute to her well-being. How Princess Kim describes what contributes to their well-being Princess Kim’s definition of well-being is “to feel comfortable with myself, where I am and with the people around me.” This definition can be described as socially desirable. During the interview, she adds that it is easy for her to feel happy. This contrasted with the interview situation, in which the participant was often unable to handle the interview questions. Princess Kim decided not to deepen in family or school life domains to avoid crying during the interview. Thus, it was not possible to expand this definition or examine her life more in detail. Studies and future The main social practices impacting Princess Kim’s well-being are the ones related to her professional future. Princess Kim is the only participant that was in her last year of high school. During 2019, all schools were closed for about two months due to a national teacher strike. Princess Kim was not able to attend school and needed to study by herself. The strike limited her contact with her classmates and affected her routine. Fragment 51: Princess Kim STANZA 14 STANZA 14 149 Fragment 51 (cont’d) I: Tus amigos del liceo contribuyen a tu bienestar, I: Your friends from school contribute to your well-being ¿Me puedes contar un ejemplo de eso? Can you give me an example of it? Algo entretenido que haya pasado, Something nice that happened que te haga sentir feliz That makes you feel happy? P: Es bastante sencillo sentirme feliz, P: It is quite easy to make me feel happy, tener una conversación, To have a conversation sentirme tranquila Feeling calm STANZA 15 STANZA 15 I: Ya, cuándo fue la última vez que tuviste una I: OK, when was the last time you had a conversación? conversation? P: En el liceo, uff, es que están en paro, P: At school? Uff, there is a strike now entonces, la última, fue hace tanto tiempo, que no... so the last time was so long ago, that I don’t… I: No sé la última, pero una que te acuerdes I: I don’t know if the last one then, but something that you can remember P: Ah, ya. Hmm, estoy pensando. (…) P: Ah, ok. I’m thinking about it. (…) Fragment 51 shows that school as a context provides spaces of interaction that are positive for well-being. Consequently, to not be able to attend was impeding her well-being. The phrase “It is quite easy to make me feel happy, to have a conversation, feeling calm” can be interpreted as she believes that her feeling happy and calmed is an effortless state, therefore more natural than the current situation. When I asked when was the last time that she had a conversation that made her feel happy, she responded “At school? Uff, there is a strike now, so the last time was so long ago, that I don’t…”, which 150 can be interpreted as she did not feel happy since the start of the strike. The strike as a social practice involves material factors and community cultural values that represent conditions in which Princess Kim cannot do the things that contribute to her well-being. I see this fragment as a reflection of her state of mind during the interview. Princess Kim was so stressed about her future that could barely talk about it. The strike was an additional source of stress, but the main worry was about being able to study at the university. Fragment 52: Princess Kim STANZA 30 STANZA 30 P: A ver, es que creo que por estar en cuarto P: Ok, it’s just I believe that because of [the fact that] I’m in fourth year tengo mucho estrés, y no solo yo, I have so much stress, and not only me todos mis compañeros están igual, all my classmates are the same porque es complicado, porque no tenemos, because it is complicated, because we do not have o algunos, incluyéndome, or some of us el qué vamos a hacer, a cada rato, we don’t know what are we going to do, all the time escoge tu carrera, estudia, y todo esto, choose your career, study, and all that y es como muy estresante and it is like, really stressful The stanza starts with Princess Kim stating a fact –i.e., being in fourth year– showing she has have assumed to feel stressed in the last year of high school as something natural. Additionally, the phrase “and not only me, all my classmates are the same” is used as a way to demonstrate that the stress and anxiety is not a personal issue, but a normative problem of people in her situation. 151 Like everyone in Chile, to study in the university Princess Kim needs to do a standardized test. A good result on the test means scholarships and the possibility to pick any preferred career, and also the opportunity to study outside the region. A bad result means a very narrow set of possibilities. Thus, the test is a turning point for Chilean students. The participant sees the test as a personal effort and responsibility that reflects her ability to succeed. Obviously, high schools need to prepare students for this test, and not all the schools are equally successful on that task. Aysen’s schools usually fare very poorly in this test. It is arguable that Princess Kim is fully responsible for her test results. As a student from Aysén, her preparation for the test is insufficient. Princess Kim finds an outlet in K-pop. She follows bands, dances and listen to music. She also had found a community of people that likes K-pop to share and be part of. As she explains, K- pop distracts her from the stress of finishing high school and thinking about the future. She uses most of her free time in this activity, practicing dancing routines and watching videos. She highlights the value of having this outlet and a community of people to share similar interests as a source of well-being. Notes for results: This interview’s information needs to be supplemented. For a gender and contextualized interpretation on stress about the future use Gema’s memo. Memo 9: Tessa Background vignette Tessa is 16. She lives with her mom and stepfather, and half-brothers. She has a close extended family. She says she has more than one house: her mom’s, her dad’s, and her grandmother’s. Tessa has good family relationships in general. 152 Tessa has several health issues, including diabetes, kidney failure, scoliosis, and dermatitis. Some of these issues are hereditary, and others happened because she had poor eating habits when she was a kid. Tessa had good grades and was stressed about her academic and professional future. She wants to be a midwife and hopefully study in Santiago. Also, she describes herself as a feminist. She is particularly interested in abortion as a topic, maintaining that girls her age should have better sexual education and get an abortion safely and legally if they need to have one. How Tessa describes what contributes to her well-being Tessa describes her well-being as “when someone feels psychologically happy” and points out that other people believe they need resources and material things to achieve well-being. In Tessa’s opinion, people confuse well-being with having things. In her opinion, money and resources can be means to be happy, but well-being is about a psychological state and not a set of conditions. Unlike all the other interviews, Tessa tended to review things that were painful and hard, and highlighted how they led to something positive which in turn led to greater well-being. This was not something she seemed to do on purpose or even consciously. For example, Tessa described that she felt she was being constantly compared with her half-brother, who was her same age, and that made her feel inferior and insecure. Fragment 53: Tessa STANZA 85 STANZA 85 I: Él era mejor que tú I: He was better than you T: Sí T: Yes I: ¿Por qué? I: Why? T: Porque le iba mejor, no sé, cosas así, T: Because he had better grades, I don’t know, things like that 153 Fragment 53 (cont’d) le iba mejor en el colegio, él era más lindo, He had better grades at school, he was the cutest no sé, cosas así. Y después Things like that. And then I: ¿Y eso a ti te molestaba? I: Did that upset you? T: Sí, y un día mi mamá me llevó a esa cosa de las T: Yes, and one day my mom took me to that flores, thing of the flowers esa cuestión, That thing y tuve que hablar con una señora, And I had to speak to a lady mi mamá se quedó afuera, pero cuando salí, me dijo que And my mom was outside, but when I was out, escuchó todo, y ahí she said that she had heard the whole thing I: Uuh, ya I: Uuh, ok T: Y ahí no me dijo nada más, y empezó a cambiar su T: And she did not tell me anything else, but actitud she start changing her attitude I: La mamá tuya I: Your mom T: Mi mamá T: my mom As the fragment shows, Tessa felt that her half-brother was seen as being better than she was. The comparison hurt her, and she started therapy (“flowers” is a type of psychological therapy, very popular in Chile). The phrase “she did not tell me anything else, but…” shows that she interpreted that knowing her feelings helped her mom change her behavior to be more supportive and stop the comparisons. After telling this, Tessa described that being heard and that her mom stopped the comparisons contributed to her well-being, as it made her closer to her mother and created the changes that she needed in her life to feel better. 154 Similarly, Tessa described being very sick at the hospital because of her kidney failure. She missed several days of school, but only one friend went to see her. She interprets this story as contributing to her well-being because it helped find out who her true friends were. Instead of feeling lonely, Tessa decided that this one true friend was really valuable, and she could share with her all her problems. Talking to her friend made her feel even better than the therapy, helping her put her thoughts in order and getting insight from another person. School experience In Chile, public schools are separated into primary schools and high schools. Tessa is in her second year of high school. For Tessa, entering high school was an opportunity to reinvent herself in a place where nobody knew her. She was bullied in her previous school for being too shy or quiet, so she decided she would be different at high school, being more outspoken about her opinions and participating more in class. Fragment 54: Tessa STANZA 14 STANZA 14 T: Cuando entré a mi liceo, T: when I started high school fue harto cambio para mí, It was a big change for me porque yo en mi otro colegio era mucho más retraída, Because in my other school I was much more introspective y no opinaba mucho, acerca del curso, I didn’t give my opinions much, regarding class y cuando entré al liceo And when I started high school, pensé que podía cambiar eso, I thought I was able to change that porque a mí no me gustaba cómo era, because I didn’t like who I was y ahí como nadie se conocía el primer día, and because none knew each other on the first day 155 Fragment 54 (cont’d) era bacán, porque era como empezar todo de nuevo, it was great, it was like starting all over again y empecé a ser de otra forma, and I start being a different person y mis compañeros son muy buenos, and my classmates are so good o sea ahora, que estoy más grande I mean, now that I’m older y puedo salir, y cosas así, mis compañeros and I can go out and things like that, with my classmates no son de esos así como ya, they are not like "si no tomai, eris fome" no, “you don’t drink, you are boring,” no son muy respetuosos, cosas así they are so respectful, things like that The fragment shows how Tessa sees the change as a fresh start, in which, she had the opportunity to change her personality. She mentioned she did not like “who she was” and wanted to change because those personality characteristics were interfering with her well-being. As many psychological theories that tie personality features and well-being, Tessa recognized that some psychological attributes were negative for her. Interestingly, to change was a matter of possibilities in her context, as none would impose those characteristics from outside. In addition, Tessa is grateful for her new class not only because none knew her from before, which had made her free to choose who she wants to be, but also, they are respectful and caring overall, not pressuring her to be or do something she does not want her to be –e.g., not judging her for not drinking in parties. Tessa believes that they support each other in her class, making her feel safe and contributing to her well-being. For example, they did a baby shower for one of the classmates, which she said was “very nice and everyone was happy about it.” Also, they were organizing a strike against some teachers that were rude against girls and school reforms that were detrimental for them. This has given her a sense of agency, feeling supported enough to make changes. 156 I interpret these results as very relevant to my research question. It illustrates that some elements of social practices (positionalities, social expectations, community cultural values, and material factors) can constrain the possibilities of girls to be and act as they want to, impeding well- being. But when girls are free of those limitations, they can flourish and explore their potential. In addition, it also shows that psychological features are not always rigid and structural factors, but sometimes can be changed by the individuals if the contextual conditions are right. It may be the case that adolescence can also be seen as a moment of opportunity for those changes to appear. However, gender roles can make it harder for adolescent girls to enjoy enough freedom for a change. For example, in Tessa’s case, being quiet and shy was accepted as part of her personality, but also imposed by her dad, who deemed it as a good attribute for a girl, as explained in the “machismo” section below. Machismo Tessa defines herself as a feminist. For her, being a feminist is a matter of equality between sexes and solidarity to those who are being oppressed. Thus, without feminism, it is not possible to achieve well-being. For that reason, Tessa fights against machismo in her house and family. She thinks that when men say or behave in a way that is machista, one needs to act immediately. Otherwise, machismo would become oppressive and would affect her possibilities of being happy. An example of this is a story Tessa shared in the interview. Her grandfather was saying bad things about Tessa’s dad. Tessa was annoyed by it and wanted to defend her dad. She faced her grandfather and told him he needed to stop. Fragment 55: Tessa STANZA 62 STANZA 62 T: Y yo escuché y me enojé, T: I Heard that and I was upset y estábamos comiendo, And we were eating 157 Fragment 55 (cont’d) y le dije súper respetuosa sí and I told him, but very respectfully que no me había gustado el comentario, That I didn’t like the comment que no lo haga, le dije por qué no debería hacerlo, And that he shouldn’t do it, I told him why he shouldn’t do it y empezó a cambiar de tema, y me dio rabia, y me fui. And he started to change the subject, and I got angry and left, Y después lo empezó a contar, And then he started talking about it y quedó muy para adentro, And he was astonished porque le sorprendió que yo le parara los carros, Because he was surprised that I was stopping him por decirlo así As a way to say it Importantly, Tessa recognizes her place in the family. She knows that the social expectation of the family is that she should not stop or contradict a grandparent. Community cultural values are also in play because they determine the hierarchy between sexes and ages in a family. Tessa took a respectful approach, visible in the phrase “and I told him, but very respectfully,” describing how she knew she was doing something outside her expected behavior, but in exchange, she was doing it using mature and civilized manners. However, when the grandfather ignored her, she left the table in anger, acting contrary to her plan of being respectful. Instead of being upset, the grandfather was impressed and gave her recognition for her attitude. After this happened, both grandparents changed their relationship with Tessa, calling her more and showing more affection. Tessa recognizes that her father is openly machista. He constantly reminds Tessa that she needs to behave as a “señorita,” being respectful, quiet, and having feminine manners. Tessa mentioned this as something that she did not like, but when I asked if she was annoyed by it, she 158 said no, which was confusing. In addition, she described that the father never did domestic chores nor took care of his children. Instead, he had assumed the role of economic provider, to which Tessa is not sure contributes to her well-being or not. The following stanza partially illustrates this confusion: Fragment 56: Tessa STANZA 69 STANZA 69 I: Ya, pero igual lo encontrabas machista I: Ok, but you still found him machista T: Sí, aunque para él siempre fue: T: Yes, although for me he was always "la mujer se encarga del hijo, “the woman needs to take care of the child, de cuidar la casa, Of taking care of the house. yo trabajo, y te entrego toda la plata" I work and give you all the money I: ¿Ah sí? I: Oh really? T: A mi mamá, cuando vivían juntos, T: And with my mom, when they were together le pagaban, "toma, tu sueldo", He paid her, “here, take your salary” el sueldo, tú ves qué haces con eso, You see what you do with it pero yo trabajo y no hago nada más But I work, I wont do anything else I: Tú te encargas de lavar los platos y... I: And you are the one that needs to do dishes and… T: Sí, él siempre se ha encargado mucho T: Yes, he has always been in charge de lo que es llevar el pan a la mesa, of bringing food to the table todo eso, pero no mucho en mi crianza o cosas así, all those things, but not about my raising or things like that sí me dio hartos valores mi papá, He gave me many values, my dad pero nunca se metió mucho en lo que es cuidado But never did much in taking care of me 159 Although Tessa regrets that her dad did not take care of her and sees him as machista, she highlights his role as a provider as a very positive aspect. As the stanza shows, Tessa believes that her dad did not help her with her raising but gave her “values.” Those values refer to being responsible with their children and contributing to the house, as not all fathers provide for their kids. In Chile, it is common that even when the child support is an amount agreed in front of a judge, fathers do not pay it. But her dad has proven to be responsible and support her economically, covering her expenses and needs. Tessa explained that her dad pays the alimony and gives her extra money for other things. Once, he bought tickets to see his favorite band, taking her to Santiago and joining her at the concert. She remembers this as the day her dream came true, stressing how important her father's economic support was for her well-being and how huge was the financial effort he made for her. About this, Tessa concludes that he is “a really good father” and that regarding machismo, “he was raised that way, so no one should expect him to be different.” Therefore, balancing some forms of machismo, Tessa values that her parent pays attention to her and her interests and preferences. Instead of trivializing her dreams, he makes great efforts to help her reach them, even when those are not related to academic issues or her future. This unusual parental behavior positively impacted Tessa’s well-being and challenged the machista image, showing a father that treats her daughter in a genuinely respectful and attentive manner. Notes for results: Tessa also takes care of a little brother. Tessa also describes school stress, like Princess Kim. 160 Memo 10: Zeito Background Vignette Zeito is 15. She lives with her parents, siblings, a dog, and a cat. Her biological father does not live with her, and they have a distant relationship. Zeito tended to avoid questions. She said jokes and told long stories during the whole interview, trying not to delve into any topics. At the end of the interview, Zeito said that she was sure that I would tell her mom about her answers. When she realized I would not, she said she was sorry she did not talk more about other things that she cared about. By the age of 10, Zeito was diagnosed with a severe chronic disease that limits her exposure to sunlight. She has an intense treatment, needing to travel to Santiago and Temuco (another Chilean city) often. Zeito plans to move to Argentina with a cousin and study design. She likes Coyhaique, but she knows that it is impossible to follow a career in the arts field. She is in love with a girl in Argentina that she has met online. She tried to tell her mother that she was a lesbian, but the mom told her she did not believe her. After that, she did not try to talk about it with her family, but all her friends knew about it. She also is waiting to be 18 to start transitioning. She assumes she will not have her mom’s support, so she has been learning the legal and medical procedures on her own. How Zeito describes what contributes to their well-being Zeito did not clearly define what she thinks well-being is but commented she had adopted an optimistic view of life: “smiling is the best medicine.” She also said that her group of friends is a significant source of positive affect. Zeito highlights that she feels fully supported and accepted by her peers. She explained that her male friends treat her as an equal, which she greatly values. In addition, she recognizes that her friends would protect her and be there for her if she needs them. 161 Gender equality Zeito talked profusely about her group of friends, which are composed mainly of boys, highlighting that she is treated as an equal, which seems to mean they treat her as if she was a boy too. She exemplifies it with several stories, for instance, about punching and being punched by friends. She once had a boyfriend, and the boy was “a gentleman,” which annoyed Zeito, because she felt he was treating her as though she were inferior. The following fragment summarizes her perspective. Fragment 57: Zeito STANZA 133 STANZA 133 Z: Nos conocemos desde prekinder. Z: we have known each other since PK Y claro, el año pasado estuvimos seis meses juntos, and ok, we were together for six months last year pero él era siempre así muy caballero but he was always very like a gentleman y él sabe que eso me molesta, And he knows that bothers me me enerva demasiado. It makes me furious I: Por qué? Ah, querías que fuera, I: Why was that? Oh, because you want him to, que te tratara más como igual To treat you more like an equal STANZA 134 STANZA 134 Z: Sipo, y él sabe mi lema Z: yes, exactly. And he knows my motto que hombre y mujer es lo mismo, me vale. That women and men are the same, I don’t care. Me vale si es que me golpea un hombre. I don’t care if a man hits me No le voy a decir “machista” I will not tell him “machista” si después yo ando golpeando un hombre, if then I will be punching a man too 162 Fragment 57 (cont’d) porque con mis amigos because me and my friends siempre nos agarramos a golpes. we always hit each other. Y claro, él era súper así And of course, he was very like that… As the fragment implies, Zeito does not like to be treated as a girl, at least in the sense she understands that is to be treated as a girl in Coyhaique’s society. Using the idea of equality, Zeito describes how she preferred to be treated without the deference that the boyfriend seemed to have with her. She uses the example of her and her friends punching each other to make a point regarding equality in a broader sense, including the phrase “I don’t care if a man hits me, I will not tell him “machista” if then I will be punching a man too.” The hypothetical situation serves to explain her rationale for equality. The following line, “because me and my friends, we always hit each other,” describes a kind of treatment she prefers and considers just and appropriate. Supportive peers At the beginning of the interview, Zeito described herself as heterosexual, but she said she was not after a while. This has to do with both parents being homophobic. As I learned at the end of the interview, she was worried that I would tell them about her homosexuality, even after I repeated several times I would not. I interpreted this as a sign of her lacking trusting adults. Zeito described Coyhaique as a homophobic society. She mentioned several homophobic attacks in the community, including one hate crime. She also said that her parents were homophobic too. However, she highlighted that she feels safe because her friends protected her. For example, some older kids from school tried to punch her a couple of times, and one of her friends stepped in more than once and got into fights. This sense of protection was important for her well-being, as it helped her face the homophobia of the community. 163 Friends also support her in other ways. For example, she wants to go to Argentina, where the girl she likes lives. The friends talk to the girl every day to tell things about her. She interpreted this as a sign of caring friendship. In her words, “I think that is beautiful, deep friendship.” In that sense, her friends have tried to be explicit in that support, for example, asking how she would prefer to be treated. Fragment 58: Zeito STANZA 151 STANZA 151 lo típico de cómo te hiciste homosexual The typical (question) of how did you became homosexual y fue como oh! eres homosexual, And it was like, oh! You’re a homosexual y yo como oh por Dios. And I was like, “oh my god.” pasa mucho eso. That happens a lot I: tú sientes que a ti también te ha pasado eso I: you feel that happens to you too? Z: me ha dicho un montón de preguntas a mí. Z: they have asked me a lot of question mi grupo de amigos My Friends me preguntan cómo quieres que te tratemos They asked me how I want to be treated y yo les digo trátenme como siempre nomas. And I say, treat me as always, nothing else The first half of the fragment is about how the community reacts to homosexuality disclosure, while the second is how her friends have responded. The use of the utterance “the typical (question) of how did you become homosexual” illustrates community cultural values in which people interrogate and ask for reasons to be homosexual. And the second reaction, “Oh! You’re a homosexual,” was used to describe surprise. In the second half of the fragment, Zeito says she got different questions. By asking her what was more comfortable for her and how they could act according to her preference, her friends conceded her agency. The phrase “treat me as always” 164 illustrates that she already feels comfortable among her friends. Similarly, friends have also been supportive of her having a disease. For example, sometimes Zeito could not go outside because the sunlight may hurt her, and she needed to stay inside the classroom during breaks. 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