In 1981 Brundtland was elected Prime Minister at the age of only 42 - Norway's youngest Prime Minister and the first woman in the post. One of the first things she did was to introduce a 40% quota of women in to the cabinet.

"I always saw it as necessary and important to improve the participation of women in society. The greatest achievement to date must be creating a cabinet, a government in Norway, where nearly half of the Ministers were women. And that started on a policy programme of focusing on families, children and the empowerment and increased opportunities for women."

Brundtland believes that it's critical for countries to be represented by an equal balance of men and women so that policies reflect the full range of issues.

 "women have not at a reasonable pace entered into the political arena and other arenas of society without a deliberate push, it has not happened by itself. So that's why you have to make democratic decisions, to make greater equality in society, otherwise it just doesn't happen - and women and women's backgrounds and women's contributions are not given the place that they deserve in society. That's why you have to make these kind of moves. The country deserves to be represented by the people which means in this case half of them should be normally women".