Clarisa Hardy
Argentine-born Chilean politician, anthropologist and psychologist
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Early life and education
Hardy was born into a Jewish family. Her paternal grandparents, Julius Hirsch Hardy and Elisa Kunin, were of English origin and came from a family of rabbis; fleeing anti-Jewish persecution in Russia and Germany, they emigrated to South America and settled in Argentina, and it was during this period of persecution that the family changed its surname from "Hirsch" to "Hardy". She is one of three children of the Argentine filmmaker Boris Hardy (born Boris Hirsch) and Sara Elena Raskovan, who died of cancer in 2008. Fleeing to escape from the Nazis, the family arrived to Chile when Clarisa was five years old. She obtained Chilean nationality in 1990.
She studied at the Scuola Italiana of Santiago, and then psychology at the University of Chile, where she was a student leader and militant of the Movimiento Universitario de Izquierda (University Left Movement, MUI). She later obtained a postgraduate diploma in social anthropology at the University of Oxford.
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Career
Early public service and exile (1972–1983)
Hardy's first job as a public servant came in 1972, during the government of President Salvador Allende, when she was appointed head of the Department of Labor Relations, within the Sub-management of Current Consumption, at the state-owned Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (Corfo).
In 1974, Hardy left Chile to teach at the School of Psychology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Later, also in Mexico, between 1982 and 1983, she worked as a researcher for the Center for Social and Economic Studies of the Third World (Ceestem).
Return to Chile and social-policy work (1983–2005)
At the end of 1983, Hardy returned to Chile to work in social affairs. In 1990, she was appointed head of the Department of Social Programs of the Solidarity and Social Investment Fund (Fosis), under the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation, the same year she obtained Chilean citizenship. She was later appointed Executive Secretary of the Chilean government's inter-ministry Social Affairs Committee.
In 1994, she started working for Fundación Chile 21, a socialist think tank founded by the social democrat politician and later president Ricardo Lagos, responsible for the social affairs workshops. In 1996, she was appointed coordinator of the Social Affairs Department, while at the same time working as an advisor to the Minister of Labor and Social Welfare and to the Minister Secretary-General of Government.
In 2000, Hardy was appointed Executive Director of Fundación Chile 21, and at the same time became part of the advisory committee of the National Women's Service (Sernam). She remained in the position until 2005.
Minister for Social Development and Planning (2006–2008)
In 2006, she was appointed Minister for Social Development and Planning by President Michelle Bachelet, becoming the fourth woman to hold the post. She remained in office until 2008.
Later career (2014–present)
In 2014, she was named Executive Director of the progressive think tank Fundación Dialoga, after the resignation of Michelle Bachelet, who had just been elected president of Chile for a second term.
Since 2015, Hardy has chaired the board of the Instituto Igualdad, a think tank affiliated with the Socialist Party of Chile, a position she continued to hold in the early 2020s. In late 2020 and early 2021, she was among a group of Socialist Party figures who publicly backed Paula Narváez's bid for the party's presidential pre-candidacy ahead of the 2021 Chilean general election.
Alongside her political and think-tank work, Hardy has also continued an academic career, serving as an associate professor and coordinator of the Center for Public Management Studies at the University of Valparaíso, and has worked as a consultant on social policy and social protection for Latin American governments and international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Personal life
Hardy is separated and has two sons, Marco and Ariel, both born in the 1970s.
Published works
- Los talleres artesanales de Conchalí, Programa de Economía del Trabajo (PET), Santiago, 1986
- Hambre + Dignidad = Ollas Comunes, Programa de Economía del Trabajo (PET), Santiago, 1986
- Organizarse para vivir. Pobreza urbana y organización popular, Programa de Economía del Trabajo (PET), Santiago, 1987
- La ciudad escindida, Programa de Economía del Trabajo (PET), Santiago, 1989
- Derechos ciudadanos (co-authored with Pablo Morris), 2001
- Equidad y protección social. Desafíos de políticas sociales en América Latina, 2004
- Ideas para Chile, 2010
- Estratificación social en América Latina: retos de cohesión social, 2014