Words matter. These are the best Michelle Bachelet Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Having been a head of state gives you the possibility of getting into places others can’t go.
You have to be doing things that matter – responsibility, but also responsibility with epic and beautiful and noble tasks.
When women earn the money for the family, everyone in the family benefits. We also know that when women have an income, everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health, education, to food security, to the children, to the family, or to the community, so when women have an income, everybody wins.
It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing.
In today’s interdependent world, a threat to one becomes a menace to all. And no state can defeat these challenges and threats alone.
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.
As the old joke goes, I have all the sins together. I am a woman, a Socialist, separated and agnostic.
I am a woman with a calling for social struggle and public service.
As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere, little girls would come up to me and say, ‘I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.’ Now, they tell me, ‘I want to be president just like you.’ All of us can dream as big as we want.
Women’s strength, women’s industry, women’s wisdom are humankind’s greatest untapped resource. The challenge then for U.N. Women is to show our diverse constituencies how this resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all.
Having more women in company boards, in senior management, supervisory positions and workers in the formal sector is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. It’s good for the bottom line.
You all want to know what is my dream? Very simple. To walk along the beach, holding the hand of my lover.
I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.
There is no city or country in the world where women and girls live free of the fear of violence. No leader can claim: ‘this is not happening in my backyard.’
Women say that my election represents a cultural break with the past – a past of sexism, of misogyny.
In some places women have all the rights they deserve and in others there are big restrictions – in some countries they even mutilate women.
It isn’t that women are less ambitious, but women want to find a balance between work, love, and family.
As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.
Violence ravaged my life. I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred.
When I’m speaking of love, when I’m speaking of reversing hate, I’m speaking not only of reconciliation – even I don’t use that word – I use another word in Spanish, that’s called ‘reencuentro’ – it’s not reconciliation.
We have had scarce investment in women… One of my tasks is that everyone spends much more on women.
The 2010 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum shows that countries with better gender equality have faster-growing, more competitive economies.
I don’t like stereotypes – no kind of stereotypes.
For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.
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.
Because I’m a doctor, I know when you have an injury it will heal if it’s clean enough to heal; if your injury is dirty, it won’t heal. And so when you are talking in societies, we are also talking in healing processes, and for a good healing process, you need to make things right.
I’m working for the women in the world, today; that’s my essential issue.
The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards.
The current global landscape is quite different from the not-too-distant past. The process of globalization has intensified, and the world is moving towards new forms of governance.
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.
One of the factors a country’s economy depends on is human capital. If you don’t provide women with adequate access to healthcare, education and employment, you lose at least half of your potential. So, gender equality and women’s empowerment bring huge economic benefits.
Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It’s not something that any culture, religion or tradition propagates.
The United Nations should become a proactive agent in the dissemination of democratic principles.
There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn’t respond to the needs and will of its people.
My message to women is: Women: We can do it. We are capable of doing almost anything, but we must learn we cannot do it all at once, we need to prioritize.
