Women and Politics

This post was submitted by Jamie Bence, one of WCF’s Summer 2009 Fellows.

When Hillary Clinton became the nation’s third female Secretary of State, she brought a strong background in women’s rights and reproductive justice to her job.  More than any of her predecessors, Clinton imbues her work with a sense of how reproductive rights and global security are connected.

Secretary Clinton has been a well-recognized advocate of the global women’s rights movement since her historic speech at the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing.  There, Clinton famously declared: “Women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

Women and girls are still the majority of the world’s poor, unschooled, unhealthy, and underfed.  Thus, it is still vitally important that women have access to the knowledge and resources that allow them to plan their families.  Nations which respect women’s rights to contraception and female health care are more likely to be progressive partners in Democracy.  According to the United Nations, gender equality is an important indicator of national stability.

It seems that Secretary Clinton’s preeminence on this issue may be inspiring change in Washington, which has long been stagnant on international women’s issues.  Shortly after Congress convened in January, Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would be heading the first ever Senate Subcommittee on Global Women’s Issues.  In March, the White House Council on Women and Girls (led by Valerie Jarrett) was created to study gender implications of federal initiatives.  The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act is making its way through Congress, and another, the International Violence Against Women Act, will likely be brought to a vote in the next session.

The United States can act in consort with the United Nations to improve the station of women around the world.  Though both have acknowledged that rape has been used as a tool of war, there has never been a trial in any U.N. court for committing or allowing rape as a war crime.

However, the United States could gain credibility by ratifying CEDAW, the Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  Besides the United States, the only other countries that have refused to ratify CEDAW are Sudan, Somalia, Iran, and a few Pacific Island states.  Moving forward, Secretary Clinton has much she can do to make the U.S. a leader in ensuring women’s rights around the world.

Hopefully, she will have continued, expanded support in the White House and Congress to accomplish her task.

For more information on Secretary Clinton’s weekend trip to Mumbai and what she said to students there about women in the world, click here.