This paper explores how the Women's Studies Center (Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, CEM), a feminist, women-led nongovernmental organization (NGO), is contributing to socio-cultural change in Chile 11 years after the country's democratic transition. CEM merges the theoretical and the practical, and the personal and the political through education and advocacy. Through research, its core activity, the CEM is raising a gender consciousness in women and society at large, and transforming the social and political identities of women. By facilitating the social and political engagement of women and the broader society, the CEM challenges gender-based marginalization, authoritarianism, and discrimination at the personal, public policy, and institutional levels. Through a review of the women's movement in Chile, the history of the CEM, the CEM's characteristics within the analytical framework of women-led NGOs, and the CEM's critique of gender-based educational inequalities in Chile, it is argued that the CEM is ultimately deepening democracy in Chile. (Contains 15 notes and 17 references.) (Author/BT)