First woman president

last updated 8 January 2015

Santiago, Chile

Socialist Michelle Bachelet won last week’s national election, and will become the country’s first female president. A divorced agnostic with a child out of wedlock, Bachelet was a surprising candidate in a religious, male-dominated, socially conservative country. She campaigned on a platform of helping the poor, but for many, her appeal was her personal story. As a young woman, she had been imprisoned and tortured during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which suspected her father, an air force general, of aiding leftists.