Michelle Bachelet
Michelle Bachelet
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeriais a Chilean Socialist Party politician who has served as the President of Chile since 11 March 2014. She previously served as President from 2006 to 2010, becoming the first woman in her country to do so. After leaving the presidency and while not immediately re-electable, she was appointed the first executive director of the newly created United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In December 2013, Bachelet was re-elected as President of...
NationalityChilean
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth29 September 1951
CitySantiago, Chile
CountryChile
It isn't that women are less ambitious,but women want to find a balance between work, love, and family.
The United Nations should become a proactive agent in the dissemination of democratic principles.
Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It's not something that any culture, religion or tradition propagates.
We have had scarce investment in women... One of my tasks is that everyone spends much more on women.
Chile has done a lot to rid itself of poverty, especially extreme poverty, since the return to democracy. But we still have a ways to go toward greater equity. This country does not have a neoliberal economic model anymore. We have put in place a lot of policies that will ensure that economic growth goes hand in hand with social justice.
The 2010 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum shows that countries with better gender equality have faster-growing, more competitive economies.
There's full consensus in the military that women shouldn't be in person-to-person combat. I don't know if we have enough experience to know whether this is the right approach. But women can be elsewhere. We have mandatory military service in Chile. I pushed for women in all areas.
Given political history in Chile, it seemed to me that there was a critical task of consolidating a democracy and creating healthy civic-military and political-military relationships.
Educational equality doesn't guarantee equality on the labor market. Even the most developed countries are not gender-equal. There are still glass ceilings and 'leaky pipelines' that prevent women from getting ahead in the workplace.
My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side, encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense, my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on, I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.
The priority for my government is that there will be development for everyone, equally.
Chile needs to unite behind the goals of reducing poverty and creating more equal opportunities so that everyone can benefit from what the country has to offer,
The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards.
I was not born in a home where there were stereotypes. So that was very useful because it gave me the sense of possibilities, of flying, if I may say, of making my hopes and dreams a reality.