New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has revealed that at first she did not believe she was tough enough for the political landscape.
In an interview on Thursday with CNN's David Axelrod of The Axe Files podcast, Ms Ardern said she declined the offer to run for parliament numerous times.
Since her appointment as New Zealand's prime minister, Ms Ardern has led her country through natural disasters, a terrorist attack and the COVID pandemic.
"I had it in my head, for good reason, that you had to be quite thick skinned — you certainly can't be the emotional type," she said.
"That assumes that all political leaders need to be really thick skinned, that it's not OK to be a sensitive person in politics."
Ms Ardern explained to CNN that although she was the 99th female politician to have entered New Zealand politics, "it was not so long ago, that being a woman in politics was a very isolating experience".
"My advice would be: do not change yourself, do not think that to succeed you have to fit the mould of what you see around you … And perhaps in doing so you might better reflect a whole other part of society that hasn't felt reflected or seen in that place."
Ms Ardern further reminisced on the formative experiences in her childhood town, Murupara, when the forestry industry collapsed and the small town experienced significant job losses revealing the social inequality of her surroundings.
"So I think probably from quite a young age, I was motivated by issues of inequality — it took me a long time to decide that politics is the place to do something about that."
Ms Ardern said: "The better you are able to manage the things that you don't anticipate, the more likely you are to be in a position to do the things that you came to do."
