The InterDependent

Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile who this month became the first executive director of UN Women, told the new agency’s board in its inaugural meeting on Jan. 24 that she planned an ambitious agenda for her first 100 days but cautioned that it would be tempered by “common sense.”

Her measured approach to the early days of UN Women – whose cumbersome official title bestowed on it by the General Assembly is “the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women” -- will not please some women around the world who have been hoping for a more aggressive agenda. Bachelet explained in her speech to the board why she had chosen the course she described.

UN Women, which will have its official opening on Feb. 24 in connection with the 55th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, has a long way to go to raise enough money from UN member nations to make its presence felt worldwide. In the debates leading to the agency’s creation, not all governments, on which UN Women’s work will need to rely for a large part of its funds, were enthusiastic about the idea of another, more powerful and possibly more independent voice for women in the UN system.

Bachelet, apparently seeking to reassure critics, said that “we must work in partnership with the UN system, not in competition.”

The new logo for UN Women, unveiled Jan. 24, uses the familiar women’s symbol but tweaked: the extra horizontal cross bar forms an equal sign, while the round shape of the women’s symbol contains the globe. The hybrid is meant to suggest equality for women worldwide. The logo's two sides are differentiated by color to represent men and women, joined by the equal symbol.

After meeting over the past four months with women’s rights advocates and governments, she told the board: “What you have told me is that to deliver on our commitments to gender equality and women’s rights, and meet the high expectations of constituents around the world, we need to be ambitious. But we have to balance ambition with common sense and insure that we are building an organization that is robust and sustainable.”

As president of Chile, Bachelet, a socialist, often adopted the same spirit of cooperation with various sectors of national life, including the military, of which her father had been part before he was tortured and left to die in detention by the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In office, she played an important part in the continuing Chilean struggle to overcome the bitter divisions of the past.

The composition of the 41-member elected board of UN Women provides a clue to the compromises that might have be made in its work. Member countries on the board with good records in women’s rights – Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Japan and Russia, for example – are more than balanced by countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Pakistan and India. Saudi Arabia also sits on the board as a major contributing nation, along with Mexico, Norway, Spain, Britain and the United States.

Speaking to the board, Bachelet was frank about the challenges she faced. “I do not yet have my senior management team in place,” she said. “Our staff are not yet able to sit together in their new work units to start the real ‘institutional cultural change’ that we are expected to generate. And there are requests for support at country level to which we do not always have the capacity to respond”
She added, “I am very aware that we are coming to you with a first support budget for UN Women in a less than ideal situation.”

Nevertheless she laid out a starting agenda with five areas of focus: expanding women’s voices, leadership and participation in national life; ending violence against women; strengthening the roles of women in peace and security; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and putting gender equality at the center of national and local planning and budgeting.

Mark Garten/UN Photo

Michelle Bachelet, the head of UN Women, and U. Joy Ogwu, the permanent representative to Nigeria and the president of the UN Women board.

Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace and a leading advocate for more action on including women and women’s interests into UN peacekeeping, as demanded by Security Council Resolution 1325 and other resolutions that followed, said in an e-mail interview that she welcomed Bachelet’s pledge to promote women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace processes, which has often been given only lip service in UN missions. Weiss, who described Bachelet’s agenda as generally ambitious, said that in particular “implementing 1325 is a very good thing and we should all support her in making that happen.”

Bachelet, who defied tradition in Chile in many ways during her career, said she learned what women could accomplish if given the chance.

“I have seen for myself that when afforded the opportunity, there is no limit to what women can do, from mothers who support their families in the hardest of circumstances, to women who become ministers of finance, foreign affairs or heads of state,” Bachelet, a former Chilean defense minister before her presidential election, said.

“Women’s strength, women’s industry, women’s wisdom are humankind’s greatest untapped resource,” she added. “The challenge then for UN Women is to show our diverse constituencies how this resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all.”