Home Appointments President
President
Chile Government
| Appointee | Michelle Bachelet |
|---|---|
| Role | President |
| Organisation | Chile Government |
| Domain | Politics |
| Start | 11 March 2006 |
| End | 11 March 2010 |
| Notes | First woman President of Chile (re-elected for second term 2014-2018) |
Institutional context
The President of Chile is the head of state and head of government, directly elected to a four-year non-consecutive term. The modern constitutional framework dates to the 1980 constitution as amended after the 1990 democratic transition. From 1990 through March 2006 every elected post-Pinochet head of state was male.
Career path
Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born 1951) is a paediatrician trained at the University of Chile. Her father Alberto Bachelet, a senior Chilean Air Force officer, was tortured to death by the Pinochet regime in 1974; she and her mother were subsequently detained and exiled to Australia and East Germany. After returning to Chile she worked at the Ministry of Health and was appointed Minister of Health (2000–2002) and Minister of National Defence (2002–2004) under President Ricardo Lagos — the first woman in either role.
Appointment
Bachelet won the January 2006 presidential election runoff against Sebastián Piñera with approximately 53.5 percent of the vote. She was sworn in on 11 March 2006 as the first woman President of Chile, and the inaugural directly elected woman president in Latin America. She served until 11 March 2010, returned to office for a second term from 11 March 2014 to 11 March 2018, and subsequently served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1 September 2018 to 31 August 2022.
Tenure
Eight years across two terms. The first term oversaw substantial pension reform; the second oversaw an education-system reform programme and a constitutional-replacement process that did not complete. She also served as inaugural Executive Director of UN Women from 14 September 2010 to 15 March 2013, between her two Chilean presidential terms.
Cluster context
Bachelet is recorded once in this dataset for her first presidential term. Her career trajectory — Chilean cabinet, Chilean presidency, founding head of UN Women, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, second Chilean presidency — represents the most extensive personal sequence of senior-institutional first-woman roles in the dataset.