You have to be doing things that matter - responsibility, but also responsibility with epic and beautiful and noble tasks.

I am a woman with a calling for social struggle and public service.

I took a gamble to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.

I was not born in a home where there were stereotypes. So that was very useful because it gave me the sense of possibilities, of flying, if I may say, of making my hopes and dreams a reality.

We have to make sure that women's issues are an essential element on the agendas of all heads of state, all governments.

There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn't respond to the needs and will of its people.

People see I am a mother and head of a household. Today in Chile, one-third of households are run by women. They wake up, take the children to school, go to work. To them I am hope.