U.N. Women's chief: "When women make money, it helps everyone"

From CBS News - www.cbsnews.com

March 22, 2012 11:17 PM

By  Pamela Falk

(CBS News) U.N. Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet says women's rights have progressed -- but there is still the dark side of violence against women in many forms. Human trafficking is a global dilemma, she said, "the third largest world market behind weapons and the drug market."

And in the U.S., where women may be overtaking men in pay, Bachelet told CBS, "When women earn the money for the family, everyone in the family benefits. "We also know that when women have an income, everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health, education, to food security, to the children, to the family, or to the community, so when women have an income, everybody wins."

"We know that," Bachelet said, "according to estimates of the Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO) that in the world we have so many places where women are the more important agricultural labor force, that if they are given the same access, not more, the same access to credit, to water, to technical support, access to markets, as men, the agricultural output of the country will rise between 2 and 4% and we can take out of hunger of 150 million people."

Bachelet knows a lot about being a woman in a man's world. She is a physician and she was minister of Health, in addition to being the Minister of Defense of Chile, before she was elected President of Chile, the first female President elected in her own right in Latin America. She and her family suffered during the Pinochet era, back in the 1970s, when her father died in prison and she and her mother were jailed and tortured by the military junta.

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