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Opportunities and Constraints on Gender-Egalitarian Policy Change: Michelle Bachelet’s Social Protection Agenda (2006–2010)

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Gender, Institutions, and Change in Bachelet’s Chile

Part of the book series: Studies of the Americas ((STAM))

Abstract

In many ways the government of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) represented an ideal scenario, both for far-reaching social reforms and for integrating gender equality as a guiding principle within these reforms. Bachelet headed the fourth consecutive center-Left government after the return to democracy (the second under socialist leadership), and her room for maneuver was comparatively greater than that of previous administrations: politically—owing to the elimination of some important authoritarian enclaves; and fiscally—as a result of the boom in commodity prices particularly for copper, Chile’s major export earner. Furthermore, Bachelet was not only the first female president of the country, but had campaigned and won based on an electoral platform in which both social protection and gender equality figured prominently. One of the declared goals of her government was to articulate a rights-based social protection system that would guarantee equal opportunities from the cradle to old age. How far did this ambitious agenda translate into substantive policy change? And to what extent were gender inequalities taken into account and addressed?

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Authors
  1. Silke Staab
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Georgina Waylen (professor of Politics) (professor of Politics)

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© 2016 Silke Staab

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Staab, S. (2016). Opportunities and Constraints on Gender-Egalitarian Policy Change: Michelle Bachelet’s Social Protection Agenda (2006–2010). In: Waylen, G. (eds) Gender, Institutions, and Change in Bachelet’s Chile. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137501981_6

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