Chile: Time for Women?
Former defense minister Michelle Bachelet could win the presidency Sunday in Chile, a country that in 2005 lost its most brilliant female politician, Gladys Marin.

Marin died on March 6 after struggling against cancer for a year and a half. She was a key figure in the last few decades of national life and run for president in 1999, in the elections won by current President Ricardo Lagos.

Historians say that the Communist Party (PC) was the first in Chile to bestow such a political responsibility on a woman.

Gladys was very much respected and admired, as she consistently defended principles and ideas with passion, becoming an exceptional leader.

She began her political career early in life, joining the PC at 18. Five years later, she was elected deputy and member of the PC Central Committee and Political Committee.

She was also secretary general of the Communist Youth (JJCC) and PC secretary general and president.

"Women involved in politics are very exposed to the conservative, male environment we live in," she said on one occasion.

She said that "women are banned from the world of politics. If a woman excels in it, people say she is masculine or she is the lover of an entire leadership."

However, despite pressures, she maintained her tenacity and raised her voice against ex dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-90).

In fact, on Jan 12, 1988, she filed a first suit against him for genocide, kidnapping and other charges.

"We won´t rest unless Pinochet gets the punishment he deserves," she would always say.

Death came as she was devoted to the search for the fate of those detained-disappeared during dictatorship.

Her death "saddens all Chileans", Michelle Bachelet admitted during the leader"s funeral.

"All her life, Gladys was a brave, consistent woman who vehemently pursued her ideas," she added.

Bachelet, a doctor by profession, is the presidential hopeful of Concertacion, a coalition of parties with three successive terms in power since the so-called return of democracy in 1990.

Right wing multimillionaire Sebastian Pinera is her rival in the presidential race.

Bachelet, daughter of an Army general who was a victim of his pro-coup fellow members of the Army in Sep 1973, was detained and tortured along with her mother in Jan 1975.

After living in exile in Australia and Germany, she returned to Chile in 1979. President Lagos appointed her as minister of Health in 2002, and four years later she quit the post of Defense minister to try become the sixth woman president in Latin America.