“I taught them how to make plates out of leaves and how to grow vegetables. …I taught them you’ve got to work hard to feed yourselves! That is what empowering women is all about, not about making men and women fight.”
Video: Gulabi Gang (Current on Youtube)
“As a growing body of research shows, however, the world’s most pressing economic and political problems simply cannot be solved without the participation of women. That’s why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working to ensure that advancing the status of women and girls around the world is fully integrated into every aspect of U.S. foreign policy. As of this spring, with the release of a first-ever secretarial policy directive on gender, advancing the status of women and girls worldwide is officially a requirement in every U.S. diplomat’s job description. As Clinton said in March, the United States will use ‘every tool at our disposal’ to support this crucial cause.
Why? This is, as Clinton has called it, a ‘Full Participation Age,’ an era when information transcends borders, opinions and ideas scale firewalls, and the world can no longer afford to leave millions of women out of the global community. It’s no coincidence that those countries that deny women basic human rights are some of the poorest and least stable. According to the World Economic Forum, countries where men and women are closer to enjoying equal rights are far more economically competitive than those where the gender gap has left women and girls with limited or no access to medical care, education, elected office, and the marketplace.”
Excerpted from: Why Women Are a Foreign Policy Issue (Foreign Policy)
Wayfaring Feminist 