A biography for Najat Vallaud-Belkacemhasn’t been written yet.
“Compared to some of our neighbours, it's not frowned upon to be a mother and work in France.”
“School was always a major player in my personal journey. It allowed me to open up to the world, and also social mobility. It allowed me to enrich myself, to read, learn and understand.”
“Low income persons in need of social housing should be housed in more prosperous areas to avoid placing an extra burden on the poorer areas and to redress the balance in terms of housing, redressing the balance in terms of schooling.”
“I feel totally French - I don't feel half-French because of my dual nationality. For me, dual nationality just means I don't deny my roots.”
“When I look back at where I came from, at the school I attended... my classmates for the most part haven't had successful paths - many have had a difficult, chaotic path.”
“I decided to make a lifetime commitment against social injustices, against inequalities, and that is why I am profoundly from the Left.”
“I'm aware that beyond my own need to find a personal balance, I should be sending a signal to society as women's minister about the importance of work-life balance.”
“We need everyone to be a feminist. Feminism is the fight for the equality of sexes, not for the domination of one sex over another.”
“The fact of leaving one's country, one's family, one's roots, can be painful. My father had already found his place, but for us, for my mother, it was very difficult to get our bearings.”
“How can a child adhere to school and the notion of secularism when they see their mother rejected from a school outing, stigmatized, left on the sidelines, just because she has a scarf on her head?”
“I would like all French children to have unlimited opportunities opened up for them as French minister of education.”
“Inequality of women concerns both India and France, though it might have different manifestations in both the countries.”
“I have a chart for success at school because it gave me a great deal of pleasure. It opened my mind to the world. I learned to read.”
“You should be appeasing people as much as possible, not stigmatising them. The ban of the burkini puts into question people's individual freedoms.”
“Our universities also have a lot of foreign students. Are we going to ban them access because in their culture there's a certain type of clothing?”
“We have to reappropriate the concept of laicite (secularism) so we can explain to our young pupils that whatever their faith, they belong to this idea, and they're not excluded. Secularism is not something against them; it protects them.”
“We have to be careful not to have a form of militant secularism in our country, which is counter-productive for children we would like to see - adhere - to secularism.”
“If you're asking me in a general context whether I'm for or against the burkini, the response is simple: I oppose the burkini.”
“If a big number of young pupils felt secularism was an attack on them, it was because the term had been misused and deformed in the public debate for years by the extreme-right and the right as an attack on Islam. The term had often been misused to point out how Muslims were different to others, and that is clearly problematic.”
“I molded myself against le Front National. Against hate speech, be it racist, sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic. Against the kind of injustice I faced during my own life.”