Clift: Lessons From a Woman President

When Michelle Bachelet was elected as president of Chile last year, the first woman to hold the position, people gave her books about Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister known as the Iron Lady. Except for the lightened hair, which Thatcher recommends for women of a certain age in politics, the two have little in common. "That's not my sort of leadership as a person or a president," Bachelet told a delegation of U.S. women here in Santiago on Wednesday.

Thatcher was stern and steely. Bachelet's style, by contrast, is all about dialogue and engagement. It got her elected in a country accustomed to more authoritarian male leadership. But it's getting mixed reviews as she attempts to impose gender parity on the government, bring in new people and move out some of the old guard. A member of the Socialist Party, she got elected despite resistance from her own governing coalition of four center-left parties, and criticism of her leadership is coming principally from what one cabinet minister calls "the enemy within."

I have written a lot about women and leadership, and so I welcomed the opportunity to travel to Chile with the Women Donors Network, a group of activist progressive women who are involved in philanthropy and wanted to see how Bachelet is doing. If these wealthy women have a patron saint, it would be the Chilean president. We met in a palatial setting, a long hall with wine-red carpeting and chair cushions to match. Bachelet didn't need prodding to talk about, as she put it, "the difficulties and challenges of being a woman in a man's world." She told how the press "destroyed" her for saying she relied on her intuition in making decisions, a comment that played into the stereotype of the overly emotional woman who doesn't make decisions coolly and rationally.

Her poll ratings have tumbled to 43 percent from 62 percent when she took office a little more than a year ago, and her capacity to lead is being questioned. There have been a series of crises to which she has not responded forcefully enough. Possibly the most damaging involves the bus system in Santiago. Bachelet implemented a plan devised by her predecessor to bring the buses under government regulation so the poor coming from outlying areas could pay one price instead of multiple fares for transfers. New buses that pollute less were purchased, and the routes were redrawn and coordinated. The result was one big mess. People wait in long lines for hours for buses, extending an already long work day, and the subway system is so overcrowded that women are asking for separate cars because they're getting groped.

Bachelet won the hearts of the workers in a country where the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the most pronounced in Latin America. These are her people who are suffering, and she doesn't pretend it is anything but terrible. She said publicly that it was her intuition that the plan wasn't ready and that she had acted on bad advice, a statement that was true but that made her appear indecisive. In her comments to us, it was clear this really bothers her. She is a doctor, a pediatrician, and she says intuition or instinct is not a hormonal response. It's a quick response of the brain that alerts you to possible danger. She cited a study that shows people who pay attention to their instinct make better decisions 70 percent of the time. "I should have heard my instincts," she said.

Bachelet is no political novice. She was Chile's first woman health minister and the country's first female defense secretary. As the civilian head of the military, she made a point of defying conventional male rule, greeting officers with a kiss so often that when she didn't kiss them, they worried she was mad at them. She was elected as a leader for change, but once she disrupted the entrenched power elites, it should be no surprise that she had little margin for error. When she took office early last year, she immediately instituted gender parity, naming 10 women and 10 men to her cabinet. Since then, in what is characterized as a "political truce," she has reshuffled her cabinet three times, firing two women, including her female defense minister, and replacing them with men who had been in power before.

The fired defense minister, Vivian Blanlot, told us she's still not sure why she was asked to leave. She attributed much of the criticism to "Pinotchismo," which is rampant in Chile's conservative media. One opinion columnist speculated she was at an age when hormones become a factor. In the end, it came down to political expediency. "It was much easier to change her than men with all the political connections," says Marcela Rios, a sociologist with the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences.

Bachelet has brought the poor out of the shadows and named a minister for the environment, yet the path to progressive reform remains steep. Women worry that if she fails, her presidency will be seen as an historical accident and women's leadership will be discredited. After Ségolène Royal lost this month's presidential election in France, Bachelet jokingly told a group of male Chilean lawmakers, "Knowing a woman president is not a trend, I bet you slept better last night." Bachelet is limited to a single four-year term. She still has time to rebound, but given her shaky start, she'd better move fast.