Obama aims to smash the 'glass ceiling' for women

President Barack Obama said American women should have "no limits on their dreams" as he set up the White House Council on Women and Girls.

He lavished praise on his wife Michelle, calling her the "rock of the family", and said he wanted his administration to make sure it considered how its policies affected women and families.

Mr Obama also cited his former rival Hillary Clinton as an example of how women could triumph in the US. He made the comments as he announced the formation of the women's council, which is intended to make sure women are taken into consideration in any policy adopted by his government.

In an address at the White House Mr Obama said: "I sign this order not just as a president but as a son, a grandson, a husband and a father."

He said areas such as equal pay, family leave and child care were family and economic issues as well as women's issues, and pointed out that American women earned 78 cents to every dollar earned by a man and that one in four suffered domestic violence. Women make up half the American workforce but only three per cent of executives.

Mr Obama had words of praise for his wife: "I've seen Michelle, the rock of the Obama family, juggling work and parenting with more skill and grace than anybody that I know.

"But I also saw how it tore at her at times, how sometimes when she was with the girls she was worrying about work and when she was at work she was worrying about the girls. It's a feeling that I share every day."

He also paid tribute to Mrs Clinton: "I had the privilege of participating in a historic campaign with a historic candidate who we now have the privilege of calling Madam Secretary."

Mr Obama spoke of his mother Ann Durham, who raised him as a single parent, and grandmother, who he said hit a "glass ceiling" with less-qualified men climbing the corporate ladder.

He said the women's council would make sure women had an equal chance: "It's up to us to ensure that our daughters and granddaughters have no limits on their dreams, no obstacles to their achievements - and that they have opportunities their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers never dreamed of."