Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sometimes, for girls, it's about building confidence and giving them a can-do attitude. It's seeing role models, people like yourselves, doing those jobs and achieving them, just to say, 'I can do that.'
When I speak to young people around the country, I'm impressed with the confidence and self-assuredness with which they look to the future and the range of options they consider beyond traditional routes.
Outside Westminster, political debate must seem like white noise that bears little relevance to people's everyday lives. But political choices made by the governments we elect have a real impact on how we live.
What I like to see is people like Beyonce. Here is a woman who is bling-a-ding. Not only does she look like that and act like that - I've seen her perform, and I was blown away - but she is at the top of her profession.
To think that we are all the same and going to follow the same journey, that is wrong. We are going to support and liberate people, to give people as many opportunities to succeed as possible without being prescriptive.
I guess, as a young girl growing up in Liverpool in the '80s, when unemployment was high, my ideal job would have been to have been Minister for Employment to see, can you solve these problems? Can you get people into work?
We know that children living in a household with someone in work do better in school, have better educational attainment, and are more likely to have a job later in life than children growing up in a home where no one works.
That is what we should be doing: liberating everyone's potential, whether it's a self-made individual, whether it's someone taking the university route, whether it's the apprenticeship route. They are all equal and good and worthwhile.
I work with a host of amazing women who act as role models, who give their spare time freely to encourage these girls to give things a go, to reach out and take a chance and to explain that should they fail, well that's just a part of life.
It makes my life easier that I don't have to take my daughter or son to school, that I've not got to look after them because they are ill. But then, I'm not nurtured and cherished, so I will seek external love from other close relationships.
For too long, people have had to neutralise or lose their accent out of fear of prejudicial treatment or to fit in. This has then led to a lack of regional accents, which has allowed this lazy stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes to prevail.
David Cameron, and before him Iain Duncan Smith, went out of their way to attract women into the party. Yes, we need to sell politics to more women, but quotas are not the way forward. You set a quota, what is the right quota? What is the wrong quota?
Labour parades compassion for the poor, but it practised casual cruelty by consigning millions to benefits. Yet there's nothing compassionate about being trapped on benefits, being robbed of the dignity of work, and shut out from the choices that brings.
Our young people are some of the best and most talented in the world - they are driven, entrepreneurial, and innovative - and with the help of people who have already made it in the world of work, they can go on to be the bosses and employers of the future.
Top performers in their fields such as Debbie Moore, Jean-Christophe Novelli, Deborah Meaden and Jo Malone, did not go to university and are just a handful of the individuals who show that with drive and determination, you can succeed by treading your own path.
The behaviour of several male politicians against me has never been condemned by Ed Miliband, or the Labour Party, and it needs to be because in the end, it will have a long-term corrosive effect for politics full stop and for young girls who want to go into politics.
If feminism was a dress, it would be that essential little black number, reached for in times of need; different for everyone but a steady constant in a woman's life. Outspoken or understated, demure or provocative, worn to reflect the mood, the personality, the time.
What does a teacher do in a school? A teacher would tell you off or give you lines or whatever it is, detentions, but at the same times, they are wanting your best interests at heart. They are teaching you, they are educating you, but at the same time, they will also have the ability to sanction you.
I come from a background where people have had their own business, where it has been incredibly tough for a long period of time, and you are only as good as the last contract you have got, as the last job you have done, where the notion of a precarious existence does exist, as it does for a lot of people.
Growing up with a bold feminist in my mother, I witnessed her march magnificently from mini to maxi, fashions so obviously linked to powerful statements of female progression, equality and recognition. I knew no other than freedom of expression in all the forms it came in; art, theatre, fashion, literature and music.