What difference would it make if a woman is president?

HILLARY CLINTON (David Kamerman/Globe Staff)

In recent interviews with the Globe editorial board, the three leading Democratic presidential candidates were each asked a question unique to his or her campaign. Here are their answers.

I THINK it will make a tremendous difference. I think it will make a big difference here at home, and I think it will make a big difference around the world. You know, when I travel around the country and go to these events . . . there are two groups of people that I am particularly moved by. One are women in their 90s. You know, when this started happening, I thought it was a bit of atypical - that there would be all of these women in their 90s at my events. And I now see them everywhere I go. And a lot of them say something along the lines of, 'I was born before women can vote and I am going to live long enough to see you in the White House.' And it is so personal and it is so intense that I have been just enormously moved by it.

And then on the other end of the age spectrum are all of these little girls whose parents bring them and, as I'm going along a rope line, and I heard a father or mother bend over and say, 'See, honey, you can be anything you want to be.' You know, that's what my parents told me, but who would have ever believed it, right? And I think that we were of the first generation of women who had anybody telling them that, and there were a lot of barriers you had to go through. You know, when I was college-aged, there were colleges I couldn't go to. There were scholarships I couldn't get. There were jobs that weren't open to me. You know, there were all of these things that we've seen change in our lifetimes, and the idea that parents are bringing their kids, particularly their daughters, and saying that - I think sort of speaks to how big this is in the minds of a lot of people. And I think around the world it would be game-changing in lots of ways. You know, when I gave that speech in '95 in Beijing, it was meant to be a kind of call to action about women's rights. And we've made some progress in the last 12 years, but we haven't made enough, and we can see how suppression of women is directly tied to extremism, to anti-democratic forces. I think that having a woman president. . . you know, I'm not running as a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced person to do the job, but having a woman president is a tremendous statement to the rest of the world that I think would be to America's advantage, and would help us more than any policy would on a lot of the forward movement that we need to have within societies when it comes to women.