Michelle Bachelet

“As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere, little girls would come up to me and say, 'I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.' Now, they tell me, 'I want to be president just like you.' All of us can dream as big as we want.”

“There has been a cultural shift. It is difficult to measure all that right now, but Chilean women have seen my presidency as a source of pride. Women are performing in jobs in Chile now that 20 or 30 years ago nobody would have dared to imagine.”

“Women's strength, women's industry, women's wisdom are humankind's greatest untapped resource. The challenge then for U.N. Women is to show our diverse constituencies how this resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all.”

“The possibility of my presidential candidacy emerged spontaneously in public opinion polls. For my part, I noticed people's affection when I was doing work on the ground. I think the important thing is that my candidacy was born from citizens themselves, driven by the people and which the parties picked up favorably.”

“Violence ravaged my life. I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred.”

“I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.”

“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.”

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

“As a major economic force worldwide, India and Indian companies have the opportunity to set the standards in Asia in terms of women's right to decent work.”

“We have had scarce investment in women... One of my tasks is that everyone spends much more on women.”

“During my lifetime, I realized that discrimination was not accidental, that there were structural roots and causes to it. So if we wanted to change women's lives, we need to deal with those root causes.”

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

“Gender equality will only be reached if we are able to empower women.”

“My top priority for 2012 will be to make a renewed push for women's economic empowerment and political participation.”

“The current global landscape is quite different from the not-too-distant past. The process of globalization has intensified, and the world is moving towards new forms of governance.”