Michelle Bachelet

At 72 years old, Michelle Bachelet physical status not available right now. We will update Michelle Bachelet's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In her first year as a university student (1970), Bachelet became a member of the Socialist Youth, known as the “Commander Claudia”, part or the MIR (Movimiento Revolucionario de Izquierda, which tried several attempts to Chilean lives between 1970 and 1990), and was an active supporter of the Popular Unity. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, she and her mother worked as couriers for the underground Socialist Party directorate that was trying to organize a resistance movement; eventually almost all of them were captured and disappeared.

Following her return from exile she became politically active during the second half of the 1980s, fighting – though not on the front line – for the re-establishment of democracy in Chile. In 1995 she became part of the party's Central Committee, and from 1998 until 2000 she was an active member of the Political Commission. In 1996 Bachelet ran against future presidential adversary Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy Santiago suburb and a right-wing stronghold. Lavín won the 22-candidate election with nearly 78% of the vote, while she finished fourth with 2.35%. At the 1999 presidential primary of the Concertación, Chile's governing coalition from 1990 to 2010, she worked for Ricardo Lagos's nomination, heading the Santiago electoral zone.

On 11 March 2000, Bachelet – virtually unknown at the time – was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She began an in-depth study of the public health-care system that led to the AUGE plan a few years later. She was also given the task of eliminating waiting lists in the saturated public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos's government. She reduced waiting lists by 90%, but was unable to eliminate them completely and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President. She authorized free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse, generating controversy.

On 7 January 2002, she was appointed Minister of National Defense, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defense she promoted reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship, culminating in the historic 2003 declaration by General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, that "never again" would the military subvert democracy in Chile. She also oversaw a reform of the military pension system and continued with the process of modernization of the Chilean armed forces with the purchasing of new military equipment, while engaging in international peace operations. A moment which has been cited as key to Bachelet's chances to the presidency came in mid-2002 during a flood in northern Santiago where she, as Defense Minister, led a rescue operation on top of an amphibious tank, wearing a cloak and military cap.

In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was considered the only politician of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Concertación de los Partidos por la Democracia; CPD) able to defeat Joaquín Lavín, and she was asked to become the Socialists' candidate for the presidency. At first hesitant to accept the nomination as it was never one of her goals, she finally agreed because she felt she could not disappoint her supporters. On 1 October of that year she was freed from her government post in order to begin her campaign and to help the CPD at the municipal elections held later that month. On 28 January 2005 she was named the Socialist Party's candidate for president. An open primary scheduled for July 2005 to define the sole presidential candidate of the CPD was canceled after Bachelet's only rival, Christian Democrat Soledad Alvear, a cabinet member in the first three CPD administrations, pulled out early due to a lack of support within her own party and in opinion polls.

In the December 2005 election, Bachelet faced the center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera (RN), the right-wing candidate Joaquín Lavín (UDI) and the leftist candidate Tomás Hirsch (JPM). As the opinion polls had forecast, she failed to obtain the absolute majority needed to win the election outright, winning 46% of the vote. In the runoff election on 15 January 2006, Bachelet faced Piñera, and won the presidency with 53.5% of the vote, thus becoming her country's first female elected president and the first woman who was not the wife of a previous head of state or political leader to reach the presidency of a Latin American nation in a direct election.

On 30 January 2006, after being declared President-elect by the Elections Qualifying Court (Tricel), Bachelet announced her cabinet of ministers, which was unprecedentedly composed of an equal number of men and women, as was promised during her campaign. In keeping with the Coalition's internal balance of power she named seven ministers from the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), five from the Party for Democracy (PPD), four from the Socialist Party (PS), one from the Social Democrat Radical Party (PRSD) and three without party affiliation.

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• Ranked 17th most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine in 2006 (she was No. 22 in 2009, No. 25 in 2008, and No. 27 in 2007.) As of 2014, she was ranked 25th.
• Defense of Freedom and Democracy Award by Ramón Rubial Foundation (January 2007).
• Ranked world's 15th most influential person by TIME magazine in 2008.
• Shalom Award by the World Jewish Congress (June 2008).
• Maximum Leadership Award (Argentina, October 2008).
• Global Trailblazer Award by Vital Voices (October 2008).
• South American Football Honorary Order of Merit in the Extraordinary Great Collar degree by CONMEBOL in July 2009. She is the first woman to receive such recognition.
• Keys to the City of Lisbon (December 2009)
• Woman of the Bicentenary at the 2010 Energy of Woman Awards by Chilectra (April 2010).
• Federation of Progressive Women's International Prize (Spain, November 2010).
• Keys to the City of Miami (November 2010).
• The Association of Bi-National Chambers of Commerce in Florida's 2010 Award for Leadership in Global Trade (November 2010).
• Member, Inter-American Dialogue (since 2010)
• Washington Office on Latin America's Human Rights Award (November 2010).
• Women's eNews' Newsmaker of the Decade Award (May 2011).
• Ministry of Defense of Argentina's first Generala Juana Azurduy Award (April 2012).
• Eisenhower Fellowships's Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service (May 2012).
• 2012 – "10 Most Influential Ibero American Intellectuals" of the year – Foreign Policy magazine