Zitat des Tages von Michelle Bachelet:
Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It's not something that any culture, religion or tradition propagates.
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.
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.
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.
By including women in decision-making, city governments will be in a better position to fulfill their responsibility to ensure the safety of their residents, especially women and girls.
The United Nations should become a proactive agent in the dissemination of democratic principles.
In any area of the U.N. we... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can be accepted by everyone.
I took a gamble to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.
Women say that my election represents a cultural break with the past - a past of sexism, of misogyny.
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.
Chile has done a lot to rid itself of poverty, especially extreme poverty, since the return to democracy. But we still have a ways to go toward greater equity. This country does not have a neoliberal economic model anymore. We have put in place a lot of policies that will ensure that economic growth goes hand in hand with social justice.
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.
You have to be doing things that matter - responsibility, but also responsibility with epic and beautiful and noble tasks.
I don't like stereotypes - no kind of stereotypes.
Violence ravaged my life. I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred.
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.
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.
The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards.
As a vibrant force in civil society, women continue to press for their rights, equal participation in decision-making, and the upholding of the principles of the revolution by the highest levels of leadership in Egypt.
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.
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.
As the old joke goes, I have all the sins together. I am a woman, a Socialist, separated and agnostic.
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.
It isn't that women are less ambitious, but women want to find a balance between work, love, and family.
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.
People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope.
My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation.