Chile elects agnostic single mother as president

LATIN America's most conservative country has elected an unorthodox leader: Michelle Bachelet, a single mother and torture victim of the Pinochet regime.

"This isn't the first time, or the last, that Chileans are startling the world," Ms Bachelet told cheering supporters after the results were announced. "Who would have said, five, ten, 15 years ago, that Chile would elect a woman president?"

Ms Bachelet, 54, the candidate for the ruling Concertacion party, an alliance of left-wing groups, won 53.5 per cent of the vote. Her opponent was a billionaire conservative, Sebastian Piera.

The paediatrician and mother of three was an unlikely candidate in the religious and traditional South American nation, where divorce was only made legal last year. And in a land where 70 per cent of the population are practising Catholics, Ms Bachelet is agnostic.

Chile has one of the lowest levels of working women in the region, yet the outspoken feminist politician has not only won the country's top job, but promised to have an equal number of men and women in her cabinet.