Cherie Blair Women Quotations

My own foundation concentrates on women's economic empowerment on the basis that if women have their own money and are able to support themselves, they can make choices about what happens to them in their lives, about whether they have education, whether they get married, and what happens to their children.

Our experience shows - and survey after survey reveals - institutions are run better, communities are healthier when women are involved in solving the challenges of our society. Equal representation does not just lead to good democracy: it is democracy.

I think it is what you do with your wealth that is important. I don't believe in accumulating money for money's sake. It's one of the reasons I want to do more about helping women.

We need to empower all women, both financially and socially, to give them the tools to support themselves and their families. We need to start seeing them as contributors to society, as assets, not as objects of pity or, even worse, objects of shame.

My foundation is absolutely about the women we work with, and they are contributing every day to their families, to their communities, and to the economy of their countries. All we are doing is enabling them to be the best that they can be.

I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.

As a Catholic, I am proud of the social mission of the church and its concerns for the poor and dispossessed, but I still personally would support women priests.

I have never been ashamed of calling myself a feminist, and I believe passionately in women's rights.

Women tend to judge other women harshly. We should be kinder to each other, accept that we're all different and can make different choices. Not go for some kind of stereotypical idea that we're perfect. Frankly, I'm not perfect.

I think the problem is, exceptional women will always succeed. But there are plenty of less-exceptional men who succeed. Until we get the less-exceptional women succeeding equally, we do not have full equality.

For many women, becoming a widow does not just mean the heartache of losing a husband, but often losing everything else as well.

I suppose the first big shift in my life was when, at the age of 8, my father left my mother, leaving her alone with two daughters to bring up. That taught me the importance of women being financially independent. You never know what might happen.

Many of the big decisions over progression, promotion and future career trajectory are taken when people are in their late twenties and thirties, putting women at a huge disadvantage because this is the very time they are most likely to be having a break to have children.

The thing I want to see before I die is women achieving full equality in the world. I'm very passionate about injustice against women and there's too much of it in the world. In so many parts of the world, women are not regarded as worthy or equal to men. In parts of the world, women are bought and sold.

It's not good enough to believe women matter if they only matter in the U.K. They have to matter everywhere. As long as there's an idea that women don't matter in the world, then all women are diminished.

I think, when I was a young lawyer starting out, I was so determined to prove that I was as good as the men and that I could be given the same opportunities as the men, and it wouldn't make any difference at all that I was a woman. But actually, looking back on it now, I did do things that I wouldn't recommend to other women at all.