From the rise of dictator Rafael Trujillo in the early 1930s to the rule of his successor Joaquin Balaguer in the 1970s, women were frequently absent or erased from public political narratives in the Dominican Republic. Filling these silences, The Paradox of Paternalism shows that women were central to local, national, and international politics during this period. Women activists from across the political spectrum engaged with the state by working within both authoritarian regimes and inter-American networks, founding modern Dominican feminism and contributing to the rise of twentieth-century women’s liberation in the Global South.