It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing.

We need to reform the constitution in Chile. The current one was written and passed in 1980 during the dictatorship. Some changes were made after the return of democracy, but its origins remain illegitimate. Instead of continuing to make fixes here and there, we need to undertake fundamental changes to our constitution to make it reflect the reality of our democratic society.

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.

Having been a head of state gives you the possibility of getting into places others can't go.

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.

By including women in decision-making, city governments will be in a better position to fulfill their responsibility to ensure the safety of their residents, especially women and girls.

The challenge is for us to reinvigorate the relationship with the Chilean people and to give state institutions new legitimacy. But this is also a universal phenomenon. There's also disenchantment with politics in Europe.