Chile's Michelle Bachelet: Profile of the Latin American President, Politics

The presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has grabbed headlines in the United States, creating controversy among feminists and non-feminists alike about what characteristics of personality and of experience should be taken into consideration when selecting the best candidate for office. Many Americans may be completely unaware that similar dialogues and debates are also taking place in Chile, where a woman named Michelle Bachelet was elected the first female President of the Latin American country one year ago. The role of women in Latin American politics is a subject that is as interesting and as complex as the subject of women in U.S. politics. An analysis of five recent national and international news articles about Michelle Bachelet of Chlie and her first year in office reveals that many of the same problematic dichotomies that characterize U.S. discourse about women's participation in politics also plague Latin American politics. In fact, these limiting dichotomies threaten not only Bachelet's popularity, but her very presidency.

Michelle Bachelet was elected to the presidency of Chile in 2006, and her victory signaled a number of firsts for the country. Michelle Bachelet was a non-traditional candidate in almost every respect. In addition to the obvious fact that she is a woman, Michelle Bachelet is also a Socialist, a single mother, and an accomplished pediatrician; in short, she is a complicated bundle of contradictions, not unlike most human beings. Although the position of women in Latin American society is slowly reaching that of women in the United States in terms of public opinion about a woman's "place" in society, the fact that Michelle Bachelet is a woman in Latin America makes her rise to political prominence even more interesting and complicated. Not only is Michelle Bachelet a career woman, she is also balancing other traditional women's roles, such as being a mother.

Strangely, even in a country with more conservative views on women's roles (in terms of the mainstream) the fact that she is a single mother does not seem to damage her credibility and in fact, might even be a significant boost to her perception by the general public. As a woman, Michelle Bachelet does not appear to feel the need to over-complicate her political message to appear as though she is able to take on hundreds of tasks like a superwoman. In fact, her campaign platform was relatively simple, straightforward, and streamlined: Michelle Bachelet wanted to focus on improving social justice, especially for women and poor people, and she wanted to maintain the relative economic stability that Chile had enjoyed in recent years (Taipei Times, para. 1). During her campaign, voters were apparently attracted to her combination of competence, confidence, and refreshing candor; at the same time, wrote Rohter, voters perceived Bachelet as "warm and sympathetic" (para. 13). It is unlikely that such a label was applied to her primary challenger, a man from the opposition party. This is one of the first signals that the media do not assess Bachelet, or any woman in politics, using the same criteria that they use to evaluate male politicians. This observation is true of both the domestic media from the United States and the international media, though it is slightly less pronounced-at least in the examples included in this analysis-in Chile's own media (Crooks, para. 2). Still, the important fact remains that a woman is on equal footing with men in terms of her public stances and thoughts on numerous issues and gender does not always change the representation of straight reporting.

What makes the study of Michelle Bachelet and the media's responses to her so fascinating at this particular juncture is that Bachelet is exactly one year into her term of presidential service, which is traditionally a time, irrespective of the country, when a nation's media outlets evaluate their leader. Unfortunately for Michelle Bachelet, this annual review of sorts happens to coincide with an acute social crisis related to the country's public transportation system, Transantiago. Although Bachelet did not spearhead the transformation reforms that are now plaguing her administration (Rohter, para. 8), she has been forced to reorganize her Cabinet twice in response to political pressures to run the country more effectively (BBC News, para. 2; Crooks, para. 3).

The reorganization process has been as controversial as the convening of the Cabinet was, given that Bachelet brought more women into the government in Cabinet-level and advisory positions that any of her predecessors had done. On the one hand, this could merely have been a case of her selection of the most qualified candidates-all of which just happened to be women. However, this selection of women is being questioned by many critics, both in her own party as well as in the media and many are calling into question what is perceived as her feminist agenda. Rohter, whose overall tone is pseudo-liberal and whose criticism of Michelle Bachelet is most scathing and unapologetic of the five articles, accuses Bachelet of having precipitated the Transantiago crisis by bringing people into government "who are not only relatively inexperienced but who also lack political muscle" (para. 11). This overt reference to "muscle" may seem merely symbolic, but its undertones suggest that only men with significant "muscle" are fit for the job of advising and supporting the President. Although in cases like this where general rhetoric is in question, it is impossible to say if Rohter is actually drawing references between (masculine) muscle and the looser definition of muscle in reference to knowledge and will. Still, however, the unobservant reader or listener to this would passively associate a lack of "muscle" to imply that Bachelet is somehow not strong or lacks that particular man-like quality that allows her to do what is necessary.

The specific crisis of Transantiago is that it is not the modern public transportation wonder that it was promoted to be, and the unveiling of the expensive system has been riddled with minor and major problems that are escalating daily into a public and political nightmare (Taipei Times, para. 2). The international media, and especially that in the United States, has called Bachelet to task for her response, which they seem to view as weak-willed and too conciliatory. Rohter cites Bachelet's Chilean critics, who "maintain that she is almost always too timid and responds to challenges with too little, too late" (Rohter, para. 8). This interpretation is loaded with barely concealed gender bias, informed by dominant, patriarchal political paradigms which call for aggressive and immediate responses to potential crises and conflicts. Critics such as Rohter fail to identify any positive aspects of Bachelet's approach, which actually seems to demonstrate a degree of candor that is rare among government officials. In her appearance on state television on March 26, Bachelet addressed the Transantiago situation directly, saying "It is not routine that a president comes before the nation and says 'Things have not been done properly here.' But that is exactly what I want to say...." (Taipei Times, para. 6). Bachelet accepted full responsibility for a problem that she actually inherited, not created, yet this non-conformist response earned her criticism rather than praise.

Such criticism of Michelle Bachelet has largely overshadowed her significant accomplishments, which would be enviable for anyone who has been in office for just a year. A report from The Associated Press, run on CNN.com, listed the ways in which Michelle Bachelet made good on her campaign promises with respect to ensuring Chile is a socially just country. Among her accomplishments, Michelle Bachelet pushed through bills allowing women to breast-feed at work, to have greater reproductive rights, to gain admittance to the nation's Naval Academy, and to pursue more stringent penalties for husbands who fail to pay alimony and child support (CNN.com, para. 5). The fact that these significant social gains, accomplished through political power, have not been as disseminated in the media as widely as those incidents which are perceived, erroneously, to be her failings, is a sad indicator that women have not made as many social or political gains as they might like to believe.

This sampling of articles about Bachelet reveals problematic dichotomies and discourses that limit political possibilities for women. All five of the articles focus on gender as the primary unit of analysis for assessing Bachelet's first year in office, and even when these assessments are favorable (CNN.com) or neutral (Crooks), they still insist upon understanding Bachelet only through the lens of her gender. What is perhaps even more disturbing, however, is the fact that "objective" reporting can masquerade political opinions that teeter on the border between reportage and editorializing. While articles from the BBC, CNN, and The Santiago Times are more fact-based, Rohter's New York Times article is dangerously skewed because it presents subjective opinion as absolute fact. What is more alarming still is that Rohter's article, published in one of the most respected newspapers in the United States, had far greater impact than the New York Times' own susbstanial readership. The article that appeared in the Taipei Times is actually a reworked and edited version of Rohter's article. How, then, are Asian readers of the Taipei Times to get a critical, unfiltered version of what is happening in Chile, when it is distorted by the motives, albeit possibly unconscious, of a North American journalist?

This analysis is disturbing, but not surprising. The implications of such findings are important, and call readers to exercise their own critical thinking faculties and analytic abilities to consider the sources of information that they consult when trying to learn about events that are happening at home and abroad. In the case of President Bachelet, the media have imposed their own limited gender schema in order to evaluate, rather than to simply report, on Bachelet's first year in office. It is only through critical reading and analysis that the limitations of these reports can be identified and understood. Works Cited

The Associated Press. "Chilean Women Make Gains Under Female Leader." (March 9, 2007).

CNN. Retrieved on March 10, 2007 from http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/09/chile.women.ap/index.html

BBC News. "Purge amid Chile transport chaos." (March 27, 2007). BBC News. Retrieved on March 28, 2007 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6498445.stm

Crooks, Nathan. "Bachelet Sacks Government Issues Transantiago Mea Culpa." (March 27, 2007). The Santiago (Chile) Times. Retrieved March 28, 2007 from http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=13321&topic_id=1

Rohter, Larry. "One Year Into Term, Chile's Leader Tries to Reverse Slide." The New York Times. (April 3, 2007). Retrieved April 3, 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/americas/03chile.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Taipei Times. "Transport Fiasco in Chile Saps Bachelet's Popularity." Taipei Times. Retrieved on April 4, 2007 from http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/04/04/2003355215