Last week, my mom emailed me an article from The Korea Times. She knows how much I love leadership, especially when women’s rights and human rights are involved. I’ve been meaning to write about this Women’s conference awhile ago, but didn’t get the chance to do so until today. It is an article about the conference on empowering women across the globe, “Women in the World Summit,” which was held at a theater in Manhattan over the weekend beginning March 12th through March 14th.
As Jocelyn Noveck’s Huffington Post article shares, there were “prominent women” from all around the world, including:
A secretary of state. A top presidential adviser. An iconic film star. Fashion designers, TV anchors, and a queen… But they weren’t the stars of the event. It was the women’s rights and human rights activists…who drew the cheers, and sometimes tears, at “Women in the World: Stories and Solutions,” a gathering organized by Tina Brown, editor of The Daily Beast Web site, as they talked about how women have progressed and what remains to be done.
Queen Rania of Jordan, for example, spoke to Katie Couric about empowering young girls with education. For those of you who don’t already know, Queen Rania promotes education actively in her own country. As reported by the Office of Her Majesty, Press Department in New York, she said, “Educating a girl is probably the highest returning investment that a country can make.”
On the evening of March 12th, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened the conference. After the audience watched a clip from her famous speech regarding “Women’s rights are human rights” at the 1995’s United Nations women’s conference in Beijing, Clinton joked:
I am thrilled that we are marking this 15th anniversary of the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing. Fifteen years and many hairstyles ago – (laughter) – we have seen a lot of progress. (Laughter, applause.) And on behalf of women as well. (Laughter.)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also at the conference and was interviewed by Barbara Walters during the rape panel. Albright was the first female U.S. Secretary of State and then-highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. When she was a younger, Albright never thought she’d be serving in a presidential cabinet. During her interview, she said:
I never thought that I would be able to be Secretary of State. It just never occurred to me, mainly – as I often put it – because I had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt.
We have hope, ladies! :-)
Following Albright’s interview, was Tina Brown who led the dialogue on “Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery.” Panel included: Luis CdeBaca (Ambassador-At-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking Persons), Dao Tuyet Lien (former trafficking victim from Samoa), Sunitha Krishnan (Co-founder of Prajwala, Indian anti-trafficking organization), and Shoma Chaudhury (Managing Editor of Tehelka, Indian news magazine that has published incisive investigations of the sex-trafficking industry).
I became interested in fighting against human trafficking during my undergrad Human Rights class taught by Professor Zook at UC Berkeley in 2004. One of my investigative research papers was on the human trafficking in Japan. This is what triggered my passion to begin a career in federal law enforcement. According to the CRS Report for Congress by Frances Miko, Specialist in International Relations, “Trafficking is now considered the third largest source of profits for organized crime, behind only drugs and guns, generating billions of dollars annually” (Miko, 2002).
In the New York Times special issue, “Saving the World’s Women” (I’ve used this article in my previous post about helping working women), Nicholas Kristof says that the “International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds.” In The Daily Beast article, “Ending Human Slavery,” a contributing writer says “about 70 percent of them are women or girls trafficked into sex slavery.”
Check out the Highlights of the Women in the World Summit at The Daily Beast. In addition to the women’s conference, you can also check out these awesome Leadership Organizations on Women’s Learning Partnership’s (WLP) website. Women are taking over the world.
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