INTERNATIONAL: UN Women's Head Michelle Bachelet: A New Superhero?

Let it not be said that those wags at the United Nations don't have a sense of humour. Given the task of finding an office for its new women's rights body, the premises managers found some space in the iconic Daily News building – otherwise known as the home of Superman.

But now, instead of Clark Kent, the world has Michelle Bachelet – taking on the superhuman challenge of redressing gender inequality. Unlike the last son of Krypton, relatively little is known about Bachelet outside her native Chile and the corridors of international diplomacy. And more than 100 days after it was set up, there are still significant questions about UN Women: what exactly will it do, what are its powers, and how it will be financed?

The body takes over from four existing, underfunded and relatively powerless institutions devoted to women's rights, which the UN general council voted to replace after Kofi Annan, former UN secretary general, pointed out "study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women". Bachelet, who was Chile's first female head of state, will report directly to the secretary general and should command a start-up budget of $500m (£300m) by 2013, double what was available previously – though only about 1.6% of total UN funding. But just three months in, there are already disappointing signs of foot-dragging by major donors, including the UK.

UN watchers believe Bachelet, however, may have a better chance than most to cajole and bully her way through UN diplomacy. The daughter of an army general who died after months of torture by Augusto Pinochet's forces, Bachelet was herself tortured before being exiled. She then trained as a doctor and returned to Chile. An avowed atheist, her achievements in office include a controversial decree allowing the morning-after pill to be distributed to women older than 14 years of age without parental consent, policies to abolish shanty towns, and daycare for poor children.

In person, this former paediatrician is the opposite of a dry UN bureaucrat. In her first interview to a British newspaper since taking office, she rattles off a list of priorities, ranging from political and economic empowerment to the ending of sexual violence. But first she is apologising, in her fast-paced heavily accented English, for the UN's parsimony with teabags.

"In my country, offering tea is a sign of hospitality," she begins. "In the UN, nothing. You cannot use the money from the UN for that. My God! It's not like I'm going to be offering whisky, you know. Just a cup of tea. Water. Something." Once the team is all together and not in temporary accommodation, she promises to "bring my china cups" and her own tea. Later, she laughs: "I don't mean to change the UN attitude but . . . well, a little bit."

Charming and voluble, she is credited with getting her own way while making relatively few enemies in her home country. (Her approval rating was 84% when she stood down after the maximum two terms in March 2010.) She will need all her skills of persuasion to convince member states to help her department, some of which place a very low national priority on women's rights.

"I am an optimist," she laughs when asked about the snail-like pace of funding. "My main issue is to have enough arguments to convince [member states] to build capacity." Given such underfunding, she will not be focusing on saving money, but increasing her budget. "We have had scarce investment in women . . . One of my tasks is that everyone spends much more on women."

A woman who took herself off to study military strategy before being elected head of state, her arguments are backed by a wealth of relevant data. In the same breath, she manages to reference a gender study by the World Economic Forum that found greater productivity in countries where women achieved senior positions, and the benefits of a $3m (£1.8m) programme in Liberia to improve conditions of women market traders.

"Just 19% of parliamentarians are women and we are more than half of humanity," she says. "There are 19 female head of states in 192 member states. And just 15 of Fortune 500 chief executives are women. You see we have a problem. Gender equality will only be reached if we are able to empower women."

Sixteen years after the Beijing assembly set a target of 30% women in national parliaments, only 28 countries meet this target. Most of these (23) did so after introducing quotas, a controversial practice that Bachelet makes no bones about supporting. "I am in favour of affirmative action when there is exclusion," she states.

Economic empowerment is high on her agenda and she lays out the huge financial benefit of ending violence against women. "In the US, violence against women costs $5.8bn (£3.5bn) a year in terms medical costs, loss of productivity and childcare. In Australia they estimated that it cost $A13.6bn (£8.8bn) a year, more than the $10bn (£6.5) they spent stimulating economy."

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the five priorities of UN Women – expanding women's leadership; enhancing women's economic empowerment; ending violence against women and girls; bringing women to the centre of the peace and security agenda; focusing national plans and budgets on gender equality – is to think of all the things not necessarily covered by far larger organisations, such as health (WHO), and children (Unicef). However, the new body will also help co-ordinate gender policies at those organisations and, perhaps more importantly, improve accountability.

"We have accountability but we're not going to be the gender police," she says, perhaps hoping to squash any possible resentment felt by those better-funded organisations.

Yet there is work to be done closer to home. UN Women research last year suggested that women made up less than 8% of negotiating teams in 24 peace processes over the past two decades, and she believes women's issues are missing from peace agreements as a result. A survey of 300 peace agreements in 45 conflicts since the end of the cold war found only 18 mentioning sexual and gender violence – even though this has become a widespread violation in modern conflicts.

So Bachelet wants more female peacekeepers and policewomen, pointing out not only that female victims of sexual violence are happier speaking to other women but that "when they [the perpetrators] see women, strong, with arms, they know also that women are not weak".

Keen to start up local outposts to help on the ground, the issue comes back to whether and when donor states are going to cough up. Next month, Bachelet is due to visit London for talks with the government. The Department for International Development was expected to announce its funding commitment earlier this year, but has instead delayed any announcement until the UN Women's strategic plan is unveiled in June. The charity VSO was among those to condemn the move, calling for funding to be announced to help UN Women, "a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the discrimination and violence that prevents many women worldwide from earning an income, holding political office or giving birth safely".

Zohra Moosa, ActionAid UK women's rights adviser, describes the situation as a catch-22 – the money won't be committed until the plans are made but UN Women needs to know the plans can be paid for. So far, only Spain and Norway of the major donor countries have pledged a significant amount. "[The UN] may have a great ambition but where is the matching resource?" asks Moosa. "It may have €33m (£29) a year from Spain but, let's get real, that's not going to cut it."

As a former head of state, Bachelet is not going to criticise any countries just a few months into the job. "The real owners [of the UN] are the member states. For me, it is easier to understand as I was head of government and I wouldn't have liked to see an agency come to my country and do what they liked."

Ever emollient, she adds: "If we succeed it should mean that the rest of the system should be doing more and better."

It has been more than 30 years since the UN first adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and some would argue that inequality has got worse. Yet Bachelet, in arguing for positive discrimination, believes real change could come. "Maybe one day UN Women won't be necessary because women won't be discriminated against and will be in power. Until then, we need special measures to level the playing field."