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As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women's issues, in bringing down the population growth rate... as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension - that of a mother.

I've always championed women in politics. We just get stuck in; politics isn't a game. The decisions we make affect people's lives, and that is something we must all keep to the forefront of our minds.

I think the Women's movement has had a major impact on everybody's lives in our nation and in the world as a whole.

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.

As women have played an increasingly important role in politics, there is no question that they've brought a different perspective, focusing attention on a broader set of issues and building alliances with other women.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.

What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things.

I don't know if there's any change more significant that a human being can make than that of a woman becoming a mother. There's no change more dramatic.

Being a mother is no longer a liability, and being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition! That's what change looks like.

You get elected, often, if you're a woman, on the strength of the women's vote; then you get into office, and you have to adapt to an overwhelmingly male environment.