Invest in potential of women: H. Clinton

Narayan Lakshman 
 

Washington DC: “Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday, marking the International Women's Day.

In a statement, Ms. Clinton said there was still a long way to go towards achieving the goals adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. “Women are still the majority of the world's poor, unhealthy, underfed, and uneducated. They rarely cause violent conflicts but too often bear their consequences,” she said.

Recalling her attendance of the Beijing conference in 1995, she said the U.S. was making women a cornerstone of foreign policy “because we think it's the right thing to do, but we also believe it's the smart thing to do as well”.

Highlighting the significant differences between welfare outcomes for men and women globally, a release from the World Bank says women still trail men in the workplace, at the bank and on the farm. The Bank says women tend to earn 22 per cent less salary than men and their access to credit is limited. Also, there are significant differences between industrialised and developing nations: the risk to women of death from causes associated with maternity in developing countries is “13 times higher than in industrialised nations”, according to the Bank statement.

Ms. Clinton also underscored the path to improving women's welfare. The surest ways to achieve global economic progress, political stability, and greater prosperity for both women and men was to invest in the potential of the world's women and girls, she said.

Among the various events celebrating Women's Day, the United States Diplomacy Centre opened an exhibition, The Colors of Warka: Paintings by Iraqi Women of Muthanna Province. Officials introducing the paintings touched upon the courage of the women artists in exhibiting their work in Iraq. These paintings are on view in the U.S. for the first time.