At term´s end, notable strides in equality Ramiro Escobar 1/28/2010 President Bachelet ends her five-year term with high popularity and significant advances for women.

President Michelle Bachelet “made women more visible,” said María Pía Aqueveque, a young economist and professor.

“Almost everything changed,” Aqueveque said enthusiastically of Bachelet´s term.

On Jan. 19, a day after the second-round presidential runoff when billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera, of the right-wing Coalition for Change, topped former President Eduardo Frei of the ruling Concertación Democrática, Bachelet signed a new law that would allow the emergency contraceptive, or “morning after pill,” to be distributed free of charge in public health centers, a measure that the Supreme Court had blocked in 2008.

The ruling had sparked an outcry from citizens who said it was a classist one as it prohibited low-income women from accessing the contraceptive.

“We´re corrected a tremendous injustice,” said Bachelet. “We´re consecrating reproductive rights.”

Bachelet´s revolution
But her victory was only one in a series of women´s rights policies since the first Concertación government took office in 1990. It was only since she took office in March 2006 that Bachelet made these reforms a priority.

“I could talk to you about many measures,” Laura Albornoz, the former minister of the National Women´s Service, or Sernam, told Latinamerica Press. “But the essential thing is that the president created a new atmosphere. She showed that women can run the highest national office efficiently.”

Just after Bachelet took office, she said: “Without the presence of women, we cannot beat poverty or be a competitive country.”

One of the first measures she took was to have gender equality in her Cabinet. She instated a quota system for governors´ offices and other state jobs, and signed into law a fund that gives Chilean mothers US$600 for each child that they can access when they reach the age of 65.

Under her mandate, a reform of the domestic violence law that protect victims was passed, and categorizes it unequivocally as a crime.  Thirty-one women´s centers and 16 new shelters were established during her term.

She also pushed for equal pay for equal work with a new law that requires employers to guarantee this.

According to the Labor Office, as of 2006, women without formal education were receiving around a quarter less than their male counterparts for equal work. The trend worsened according to the education level. Women with primary and secondary school education receive about 70 percent of what men with the same education level earn. But women with higher education earn just over 61 percent of what their male counterparts earn for the same job.

“Women are speaking up more,” said Camila Benado, a councilwoman of Huechuraba, a low-income Santiago community. Like Aqueveque and Albornoz, Benado says Bachelet´s agenda has put gender issues back into the social and culture arena.

Piñera´s change
Will this change when Piñera takes office? One of the issues that remain out of discussion is abortion. There is a blanket ban on the practice in Chile, regardless of the risk to the mother´s life, a policy that was instated during the 1973-90 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Any efforts to modify this have failed so far.

Some of the ultra-right wing politicians that championed this blanket ban are members of Piñera´s Coalition for Change, including the Independent Democratic Union, as well as members of the ultra-conservative Catholic groups Opus Dei and Legionaries of Christ, whose politics could extinguish the hopes of Aqueveque, Albornoz, Benado, and millions of other Chilean women who have fought for women´s rights. —Latinamerica Press.