Women have to be the biggest champions in the world of other women's choices.

When I joined Bill Clinton's start-up presidential campaign in 1991, I was confident that women would play an ever more important role, but I never gave a minute's thought to what would happen if we won. When we did - and I became the first woman to serve as White House press secretary - it changed my life. But it didn't change the world.

Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.'s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe.

Trying to negotiate getting a couple of kids to watch the same TV show requires serious diplomacy.

There are people in the public sector with a range of experiences that have no equivalent in business, but are essential to governing, like keeping a kid in school or helping someone get and hold a job. The value of those skills can't easily be measured against a bottom line.

I don't think women hold all the answers, but with their skills, their strengths, we can get to a better place.

You as the press secretary have to protect the president's interests and the White House's interests more broadly. And a lot of people inside the White House, as you learned, sometimes with painful experience, have competing agendas, have differing points of view, have priorities they're trying to protect.