Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

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.

It's important to understand that one gender is not superior to the other.

School is at once a place of hope, but it's also a laboratory that exposes our differences.

Is it written that equality between men and women means one can change sex? Obviously not.

Equality in education is my number one battle.

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.

We have several million Muslims in France who are mostly moderates or non-practicing. If they feel that it is the only subject in public debate, they won't feel at home and will be tempted to withdraw to their communities.

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.

When I started out, it was rare to see elected representatives with foreign roots. Often, I was relegated to my origins, put in the diversity box: 'You're the new face of diversity.' That annoyed me because I always felt French, and suddenly I was being made to feel I wan't as French as others.

Inequality of women concerns both India and France, though it might have different manifestations in both the countries.

You should be appeasing people as much as possible, not stigmatising them. The ban of the burkini puts into question people's individual freedoms.