Women in Chile - Notable Chilean Women

Notable Chilean Women

Literature

Chile has a rich literary history, being described as the "Land of the Poets."

  • In 1945, Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American, including men and women, to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
  • Other notable female authors from Chile include Isabel Allende, Marta Brunet, María Luisa Bombal, Marcela Paz, and Mercedes Valdivieso.
Politics
  • In 1999 Gladys Marín was one of the first women to be a presidential candidate in Chile. The year before, she was the first person in Chile to charge Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed during his dictatorship.
  • Sara Larraín was the other woman, along with Marín, to be one of the first female presidential candidates in Chile.
  • From 2006 until 2010, Michelle Bachelet served as the first woman president of Chile.
  • In the 2006 election, Soledad Alvear, a Christian Democrat, ran for the presidency against Bachelet. She is also the woman responsible for organizing and structuring SERNAM.
  • The daughter of late President Salvador Allende, Isabel Allende (politician), also second cousin to the author of the same name, is a prominent Chilean politician.
  • Senator Carolina Tohá is the president of the Party for Democracy.
  • Camila Vallejo has risen in national and international popularity as a leader of the Chilean student movement as well as a member of the Central Committee of Communist Youth of Chile.
Other
  • Chile's first canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church is Teresa de los Andes, a Discalced Carmelite, canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1993.
  • Javiera Carrera Verdugo was the first woman to have sewn a national flag of Chile.
  • Margot Duhalde was the first female war pilot from Chile, having flown for the Air Transport Auxiliary of the Royal Air Force in World War II.

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