Votes for the Girls

Until the burden of the family, the housework — keeping the society together — is shared more broadly, I think women are still going to find it tough. I say without equivocation that women will never achieve equality in our society without quite specific interventions on their behalf, by government.

– Helen Clark

My goal now is to become New Zealand's first woman Prime Minister, but not to destroy myself in the process.

– Helen Clark

It's an opportunity to take stock of what has happened in the intervening hundred years. I don't think that societies have been fully enriched by the appropriate participation of women at all levels.

– Irish President Mary Robinson

Most of them [women politicians] have been mothers and I think that must make a difference to the decisions they're making. But maybe when they get into politics everything changes.

– Jane Swinnard reflects on feelings of betrayal by women in power

I think the worst they think they can throw at you is the name of someone that they think you're sleeping with. I have had that hurled across the house by a National Government minister.

– Helen Clark, on politics as a boy's club

If I were to talk about my colleague's y-fronts it would be seen as completely out of context and bizarre, and I think that is the difference.

– Jenny Shipley on double standards in politics