Bachelet’s father, Alberto, was charged with treason for his support of Allende and brought to the air force academy, where he was tortured and interrogated; in 1974, he died of heart problems induced by torture in a public prison in Santiago. Matthei’s father Fernando, meanwhile, was promoted to commander-in-chief of the regime’s air force and directed the very academy where Alberto was tortured. In an even more dramatic twist, this July, 40 years after Pinochet’s coup, the human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras sought, unsuccessfully, to bring the 88-year old Fernando to trial, arguing that there was new evidence to prove he knew about Alberto’s death.

It’s a backstory that has complicated people’s interpretation of the historic gender dynamic at play in this year’s election. Some argue that having two female frontrunners is symbolic of broader social change in Chile, and an important step towards gender equality. Others discount this as wishful thinking, citing the continued dominance of men in the country’s politics, and the candidates’ political pedigrees. “It’s a party system that’s dominated not just by men but patriarchs,” says Lessie Jo Frazier, a professor at Indiana University who researches gender and political culture in the Americas. “Bachelet and Matthei are women whose political positions are defined as daughters of important men, and important military men.”

There is “something sexist about saying that the candidates are two women,” Bachelet remarked in August. “I am delighted that women are participating in politics and I will continue to promote this, but make no mistake, this campaign is about two very different visions of this country.”

It’s also about two dramatically different visions for women’s reproductive rights. While Chile has gained global recognition for its competitive economy— in 2012, the country attracted $28 billion in foreign direct investment and saw its GDP grow by more than five percent—it lags behind many of its less prosperous neighbors when it comes to reproductive rights. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, it is one of 29 countries in the world that ban abortion without any explicit exceptions. In the Latin America and Caribbean region, it is one of only five countries—the others being the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua—where abortion is absolutely prohibited, even when it could save a woman's life.

It wasn’t always this way. Between 1931 and 1989, therapeutic abortion—ending a pregnancy when a woman’s life or health is in danger, for instance, or when the fetus has no chance of survival if carried to term—was legal in Chile. But in 1989, in one of Pinochet’s final legislative acts before the country’s transition to democracy, all forms of abortion were criminalized. Under that law, which hasn’t changed to this day, women found guilty of having an abortion or doctors found guilty of inducing an abortion can be sentenced to three to five years in prison.