If there were more women heads of state in the world, the world would be more peaceful and better focused on the improvement of the overall quality of life and welfare.

I never had ambition to become president of the state or to accomplish more than men.

I have learned from my own experience that if you work hard you will succeed.

While I am a lawyer by profession and have travelled to several countries, working and educating myself, I came from a rural background in a Third World country at a time when women were told what their place was and whose mothers enjoyed even less.

I don't subscribe to that school of thought that leadership can be altogether defined by gender.

Women always look for a peaceful solution to a conflict. They are more sensible when they go for compromise or when they stand by their position. They are ready to listen to different views, to hear all the voices in society.

It was my mother, despite the limitations placed on women of her time by society, who insisted I be allowed to go abroad to study, in sturdy defiance of the male elders of the family, who protested and decided that I should be married off instead.