Addressing a group at the UN..Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
US Secretary of State Hillary clinton addresses a group at the United Nations in New York. In the background is the President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff. Prominent female politicians including Clinton and Rousseff joined voices Monday to demand a greater global political role for women.
HILLARY 2012
SAN FRANCISCO — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking Friday morning before a packed room of international delegates at a hotel on San Francisco’s Union Square, addressed the need to improve global economic productivity by leveling the playing field for women.
Talking to the audience of hundreds attending the Women and the Economic Summit, Clinton stressed that “structural and social impediments that stack the deck against (women in the workforce)” must be removed to achieve global, shared prosperity.
“For the sake of our children and our nations, it is necessary. Because a rising tide of women in an economy raises the fortunes of families and nations,” Clinton said.
Her remarks focused on how women represent a “vital source” of growth in powering global economies, because “when we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations and the world,” she said.
What is needed to enable such leaps in productivity is sweeping reform in how governments enforce laws and policies, she said.
“Laws, customs and the values that fuel them all act as roadblocks to full inclusion,” and those barriers can be formal or informal — from different laws for women regarding inheritance rights or conferring citizenship to children, to earning smaller wages for the same work, she said.
By narrowing the gender gap, Clinton said, beginning with sound economic policies that address the unique challenges limiting women, the potential increase in productivity could lead to a 14 percent rise in per capita incomes by 2020 in several countries, such as China, Russia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
“We must commit to giving women access to capital so women entrepreneurs can turn their ideas into the small and medium enterprises that are the source of so much growth and job creation,” she said.
The effort, she said, represents a new era, from the information age to what she referred to as the “Participation Age,” where all individuals are active in the global marketplace.
The summit Clinton attended is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, conference that began on Monday and has drawn some 3,000 delegates from APEC’s 21 member countries, which all have coastlines along the Pacific Ocean.
The conference marks the largest set of diplomatic meetings held in California since the signing of the United Nations charter in 1945, according to the Bay Area Council, which is hosting the event.
Although there have been discussions within APEC on the economic empowerment of women, the summit represents an unprecedented focus on the topic, according to the Bay Area Council.
Clinton is credited with prioritizing the topic, and the creation of the dedicated forum for women’s economic empowerment was agreed upon at a meeting of APEC senior officials in May.
Friday is the final day of the summit, which featured some 65 speakers addressing more than 600 delegates and touched on the themes of access to finance, access to markets, capacity and skills building, and women’s leadership.
As the event draws to a close, APEC will adopt a declaration affirming the organization and each member economies’ commitment to improving women’s access to capital and markets, building their capacities and skills, and supporting the rise of women leaders in the public and private sectors, Clinton said this morning.
Realizing that goal of equal opportunity will require persistence and patience, for what is a “generation-long journey,” she said.
“When it comes to the enormous challenge of our time — to systematically and relentlessly pursue more economic opportunity in our lands — we don’t have a person to waste, and we certainly don’t have a gender to waste, either,” she said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives at Elysee Palace in Paris, prior to the start of the "Friends of Libya" conference, September 1, 2011. Leaders of the Libyan uprising that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi met with world powers in Paris on Thursday to map out the country's rebuilding, 42 years to the day after the former strongman seized power in a coup. The Friends of Libya conference is expected to have 50 delegations attending to discuss the future of the country and offer some concrete aid to the transitional council.
_______________________________________
September 1, 2011
By BARBARA GRAUSTARK
EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — Over the years, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton have been occasional visitors to the serene, breezy corner of East Hampton where Lily Pond Lane meets Georgica Beach amid the bayberry and beach plum. Sometimes they were guests of Steven Spielberg. But this is the first time that neighbors had seen them not as casual day visitors but as householders.
Five days before Irene struck, neighbors say, the Clintons and their Secret Service entourage put down roots in a large-shingle 1920 “cottage” on Lily Pond Lane with commanding views of the ocean and Lily Pond. The house is owned by Eli Hirschfeld, son of the parking lot magnate Abe Hirschfeld, and surrounded by black pines and Rosa rugosa.
Even as their neighbors evacuated, some returning to Manhattan, the Clintons decided to wait out Tropical Storm Irene, convinced, Mrs. Clinton told a neighbor, that it would weaken.
It did eventually weaken, but the Clintons’ house, like most along this beach, lost power.
Ever since Irene passed, the pair has been seen strolling the pristine beach, shadowed at a respectful distance by Secret Service agents, commiserating with neighbors about power failures, downed trees and walkways washed out by the storm.
On Wednesday, they were walking holding hands, Bill in his khaki long shorts and Hillary almost hidden beneath a pink hat and turquoise shirt, as the steps to the Hirschfeld house were being reconstructed, said Curtis Eaves, owner of a landscape design firm. The couple stopped for a photo-op.
The Clintons have apparently recovered power in at least part of the house. Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Eaves that as long as they had power in the kitchen, and phone service, “we weren’t going anywhere.”
Mr. Clinton was not complaining about a few days in a beach house without lights. “Everything is relative,” he told Mr. Eaves. “I’m worried about the people who were flooded and lost their homes.”
.jpg)
The written work on 'Hillary Unleashed' is registered under and subject to the Creative Commons License 3.0
Unknown Feed
Hillary Unleashed 