A couple of weeks ago the magazine Newsweek published a great issue filled with stories concerning women and feminism across the world. The March 14, 2011 issue was published in celebration of Women's History Month (March). On the cover of the issue was Hillary Clinton, who has been one of the latest women on the forefront of the feminist movement. I was actually unaware of how involved in women's issues the Secretary of State was before reading the article, so I thought I would share a little bit about what she's doing with all of you.
Hillary Clinton has always been a champion for women's rights, but it was a cause for her that was on the backburner of her public life until 1995 when she attended the Fourth World Conference on Women, organized by the United Nations, in Beijing. After this, women's rights and issues have been at the top of Mrs. Clinton's to-do list.
In 1995, she worked with President Clinton's chief of staff Melanne Verveer to create the President's Interagency Council on Women. In 2009, she encouraged President Obama to create the position of ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, the post to which Melanne Verveer was sworn into in that year. In February, she called and attended the annual gathering of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Most recently, she entered in an online discussion on an Egyptian news site, where she talked not only about the current situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa, but also about women. All of her contributions to women are much too numerous to continue naming here.
Clinton's attention to women's issues has now seen repercussions in U.S. policy. "The State Department's 2012 fiscal-year request includes $1.2 billion in programs specifically targeting women, $832 million of which will go toward global health initiatives" (Newsweek 50). I think that this fact, on its own, shows just how much Hillary has contributed to the women's movement and feminism.
"All of these gains are fragile and reversible." Secretary of State Clinton points this out when talking about the progress the women's movement has recently made in her speech at the Women in the World Summit a couple of weeks ago. The article in Newsweek points this out as well. When Mrs. Clinton leaves the White House, which will inevitably happen at one point or another, many, including herself, fear that the women's movement will be forgotten. We can't let this happen. If you care about feminism, the women's rights, or anything at all to do with the women's movement, you cannot let the hard work of its most prominent members go to waste! I posted some links on the blog to women's organizations' websites, and I will post some more about getting involved in weeks to come. You don't have to be Secretary of State of the United States to make a difference. Simply telling your friends about women's rights or women's issue is a huge step forward for the movement in itself.
I can't, of course, do justice to the full article in Newsweek, written by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. So, here's the link to the full story if you're interested:
Newsweek: The Hillary Doctrine
"...I know that where girls and women are oppressed, where their rights are ignored or violated, we are likely to see societies that are not only unstable but hostile to our own interests. So we must do even more to help the next generation of women leaders."
-Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
Also, here is the link to Mrs. Clinton's speech at the Women in the World Summit in New York City on the weekend of March 10th through the 12th. It's a bit long (about 20 minutes for the actual speech), but I encourage everyone to watch as much of it as possible - it is truly riveting and shows just how dedicated Hillary Clinton is to women's rights, and how important women's rights and roles are to American foreign policy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Women in the World: Hillary Clinton Address
"I believe that women's roles and rights are at the forefront of everything that we should care about and need to be doing in our own lives and certainly in the life of our country. But sometimes it's good to be reminded why it's important to have women and girls at the forefront of American foreign policy."
-Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State
Women are even important in foreign policy. Now if that's not big, then I don't know what is.
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