The Prime Minister is head of team but its not a one woman act. I've been called all those things. Intellectual, sharp-tongued, all true. But what New Zealander is like is to know that someone is in charge and in the end the buck stops with the Prime Minister.

Helen Clark

Categorized in : New End Woman Team

When women are able to live in a safe and secure environment, they can participate effectively in the economy and society. This helps overcome poverty, reduces inequalities and is beneficial for children's nutrition, health and school attendance. Every woman and girl has the right to live in safety in her home and community.

Helen Clark

women girl children

Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress.

Helen Clark

equality women girl

Girls can do anything. We do do anything and we expect to be treated as equals.

Helen Clark

strong-women politician girl

No country will reach its full potential if its female citizens do not enjoy full equality.

Helen Clark

full-potential female country

Someone's got to break the glass ceiling, and once it's broken, everybody else comes clamouring up behind.

Helen Clark

glasses broken life

Never look back. Move on. Aim high. Etc.

Helen Clark

etc looks moving

I only take on roles that I'm passionate about. Life is too short to do things that you're not happy with.

Helen Clark

life-is-too-short passionate roles

If ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested.

Helen Clark

sorry mean kids

Any serious shift towards more sustainable societies has to include gender equality.

Helen Clark

gender-equality gender serious

Equity, dignity, happiness, sustainability - these are all fundamental to our lives but absent in the GDP.

Helen Clark

gdp dignity fundamentals

I deeply detest social distinction and snobbery, and in that lies my strong aversion to titular honours.

Helen Clark

aversion strong lying

I'm not into power for the sake of it.

Helen Clark

sake

We need innovation. We need great ideas that can be simply and effectively produced all over the place.

Helen Clark

innovation ideas needs

We need a lot of thinking and ideas. We need all the innovators, particularly with the new sustainable technologies - how do we get them to affordability so that people can generate clean energy?

Helen Clark

technology ideas thinking

I don't know that you're ever going to persuade New Zealanders that they're not going to own their own homes and I'm not going to try.

Helen Clark

knows home trying

Adopting and promoting sustainable production practices require concerted effort, something which in practice is too often missing or insufficient. Making this shift at the scale required demands forward-looking leadership in the public and private sectors alike.

Helen Clark

effort practice missing

I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.

Helen Clark

independent reality thinking

Innovation applied across the board of development is having a huge impact, and can have more. All sorts of technology can provide shortcuts, can overcome obstacles which once seemed insuperable.

Helen Clark

impact innovation technology

I only take on roles that I'm passionate about.

Helen Clark

passionate roles

It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.

Helen Clark

democracy ordinary people