El medio británico The Financial Times reconoció a Elisa Loncón, presidenta de la Convención Constitucional, como una de las 25 mujeres más influyentes del año en su ránking anual. “Ha ejercido su liderazgo en una de las tareas más importantes y complejas de la historia reciente de chile, con énfasis en el carácter inclusivo de la asamblea y su papel como medio de canalización del diálogo social”, señaló Kirsten Sehnbruch, investigadora adjunta COES y British Academy global professor distinguished policy fellow en LSE, quien redactó la semblanza de Elisa Loncón publicada por FT.
Nota original, publicada por The Financial Times:
The FT’s annual Women of the Year has long celebrated achievement and influence. With the same objective in mind, we’ve expanded the list for 2021 and asked some of the most influential women in the world to write the entries, including Jane Fraser, Christine Lagarde, Elizabeth Warren, Billie Jean King, Malala and Greta Thunberg. Women of the Year is a celebration, of course. But it is also a lens through which to understand the dynamic nature of leadership and power. To ask “Who was influential in 2021?”, you must grapple with “What is influence?” and “How is it changing?” We put the list together in collaboration with FT journalists from dozens of international bureaus, former women of the year and readers like you. Across continents, industries and issues, all of these remarkable women have shaped this tumultuous year. Each of them is sure to help shape the better ones to come.
(By Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times)
Elisa Loncón Antileo
President, Chile’s Constitutional Convention
By KIRSTEN SEHNBRUCH
When the Chilean electorate voted for a constituent assembly in May this year, 60 per cent of the seats went to independent candidates not affiliated to political parties. The task facing the assembly, of writing a new constitution to replace the one written during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was never going to be easy. But it is particularly difficult after a long period of political turmoil and social protests, in which the establishment was effectively voted out of the process.
In this complex situation, Elisa Loncón Antileo was elected president of the constituent assembly. Her election was nothing short of remarkable. An indigenous woman from a remote Mapuche community in the south of Chile now presided over one of the most important and complex tasks in recent Chilean history.
She has exercised this leadership with an emphasis on the inclusive nature of the assembly and its role as a means of channelling social dialogue.
Her challenges included setting up the working procedures and agenda of the assembly as well as managing the competing demands of the groups represented there. But she has brought a calm, grounded leadership to the task, and has generally avoided becoming involved in the polarising conflicts surrounding her.
(Sehnbruch is a British Academy global professor, distinguished policy fellow at the LSE and a former research fellow at the Universidad de Chile)