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Thank you, Ambassador Tefft and thank you all for being here. Let me extend a greeting
to Ukraine’s Minister of Social Policy and I ask you to join me in welcoming her this
morning. I am really pleased to be at this important event and I understand there are
some women here who participated in the “Invest for the Future” conference in Warsaw last
fall. Are they here? Women who went? And I understand that some of you know about Vital
Voices and Hillary Clinton and Veland Rebiere? Can we at least support? (applause)
As I look around the room, do you know what I see? I see successful women taking charge
of their own futures. I see a room full of leaders who will be a great force for change,
for economic growth, and for equality. You who will build economies, and build bridges
to the young girls and women who are going to look to you for role models. But there
is one thing that we need to change. We all have to change assumptions about gender. We
have to change assumptions about gender, because when you change assumptions, you change behavior
and when you change behavior, you change a world. I would like to see a world in which
boys and girls are born with a different projected idea about who and what they can become. Think
of little babies, boys and girls, who don't yet know what prejudice is, what discrimination
is, and what equality is. Can we commit ourselves today to make sure that boys and girls come
into the world with a new idea of who and what they can be.
The facts, the facts you know, women are the most untapped human resource that humanity
has to offer. Half of the world’s population. Half the sky. Yet they only hold one-fifth
of the positions globally in businesses and governments. There are many men sitting in
seats that might just belong to some good women. And this is not a zero sum game. I'm
not suggesting that we have to take from one gender and replace with another, no. What
I'm saying is we have to share power. What I'm suggesting is that we have to make sure
women and men are represented fairly and equally in the decisions of our lives and the lives
of our children. It is no longer simply a question of moral fairness. We are living
in a post-moral fairness argument. The rhetoric about fairness is behind us. The work about
implementing this as reality is in front of us. It is no longer just fair. It is simply
right and is simply economically an imperative. Gender equality today is an economic imperative.
Economies will not thrive if half the population is under-represented. The world's problems
cannot be solved with half of the world's decision makers. Without the representation
of women in leadership circles, we are denying, not just ourselves, we are denying ours societies
the best they can be.
So together, all over the world we are fighting, we are fighting to take charge of our affairs
and to help point our societies in a positive direction. How are we going to do it? One, become entrepreneurs.
When we become entrepreneurs, we pave the way for others to earn income. Two, let's
be independent. Independent with self-respect. Three, let us be prosperous and peaceful.
There are three things I tell women they need today. Three "C" words. And if you remember
nothing else from today, three "C" words: community, contacts or connectivity and confidence.
Do we all have the confidence we need to lead? I do. Do you? Then confidently raise your
hand, if you have the confidence to lead. I do. Please teach our daughters and granddaughters
to have the confidence to put their hand up in the classroom, to put their hand up in
the board room, to put their hand up in government. Empowering women is also about being smart
and one way to understand how to ask the smart question today is not to ask why women, is
to ask why not. What is the cost of women not participating, not sharing in economic,
in government, in non-governmental civil society leadership? I will tell you the cost so that
you can tell the rest of your society that if you leave women out, here is what you will
get.
Unrealized profit, unrealized economic growth, unrealized democracy, closed access to opportunity,
and the loss of half a generation. Here's what we will lose without women at the peace table, in
the negotiating room. We will have religious intolerance. We will have bad legislation.
We will compromise our ability to resolve conflicts and without women and their sense
of community we are likely to have violent extremism. As the ambassador said, we have
seen much progress in gender equality in the United States. We are proud of the gains we've
made but we are not arrogant about what we haven't done. Women in the United States still
face stereotyping, discrimination, inequality in pay, but they have something new on their
side when it comes to things like *** violence, or other forms of discrimination. We now have
the law on our side. You must have the law on your side.
So the truth is no country in the world has fully achieved full gender equality. And all
that means is we have work to do.
The time has come for American women, Ukrainian women, global women, to decide we have to
finish the job. Are you prepared to finish the job? I am prepared to work day and night
to help women break whatever last glass ceilings they live under, to remove whatever blockades
stand in the way of getting to the top. Whatever stands in the way of education that helps
women to become decision makers, let's help to make them aware of their rights and their
responsibilities and their equal opportunity. Thank you for doing this conference, for forming
associations that help women organize, become advocates, become role models, become success
stories, and exchange your ideas with us and with others. As I said, you are a group full
of leadership, full of hope, full of the future, and I want to wish you a productive day of
work sessions, conversations, connections. And for all of you, may your confidence build
and your strength endure. Thank you all so much for the opportunity.