Gladys Peake Guevara: twenty years of chilean nursing leadership in the second half of the 20th century

Introduction: The history of health has numerous milestones starring anonymous women, forming a historiographical void of those female figures who have contributed to health policies.

Objective: To highlight the figure of Gladys Peake as an outstanding Chilean and Latin American nurse, contributing to the construction of a professional epistemological body of women.

Methodology: Historical-biographical based on the review of primary documentary sources and stories from secondary sources subjected to thematic analysis and analyzed under the theoretical assumptions of intersectionality.

Results: Three categories of analysis emerged: Gladys Peake as an articulator of the professionalization of Chilean nursing, as Sub-Head of the Sub-Department of Nursing and her actions during the institutional breakdown during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Conclusions: Gladys Peake was a leader who positioned herself as a benchmark for national nursing, and in her management, she reproduced the practices of a moment of full institutional crisis in favor of the development of Chilean nursing. However, she knew how to superimpose her professional identity over her ideology, realizing the political potential of female nurses.