50 Years of Progress: Moving Toward Full Human Rights and Economic Empowerment for Women

In this essay first published in the Chicago Policy Review in 1999, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton critically examines the legal, economic, and social trends in human rights policies for women around the world. Secretary Clinton’s assessment of global progress in the field of human rights during the past fifty years was a synthesis at that time of her own reactions to meeting with thousands of women and the findings from a number of United Nations conferences on women’s issues. Countries and regions that have made significant efforts to improve the physical, psychological, and economic well being of their female citizens are detailed. Countries that have failed to progress are also analyzed.

Last year, when the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, visited the White House to mark International Women’s Day, he said, “Women’s rights are not something to be given or taken away by government like a subsidy… the oppression of women, from discrimination to death, is the oppression of humanity.” The Secretary General’s words ring especially true as we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the strides that women have made over the last half century since that historic document created a new international standard for human dignity and freedom.

In the 50 years since the adoption of the Declaration, we have, as a global people, managed progressively to expand the circle of full human dignity. Because of this document, individuals and nations alike have a standard by which to measure fundamental rights. Many of the countries that have emerged in the last 50 years have drawn inspiration from the Declaration in their own constitutions. Courts of law look to the Declaration, as it has laid the groundwork for the world’s war crimes tribunals. It has prompted governments to set up their own commissions to safeguard basic liberties. And yet, in spite of this half-century of progress, we have not expanded the circle of human dignity far enough. There are still too many women excluded from the fundamental rights proclaimed in the Declaration—too many whose suffering we fail fully to see, hear, or feel.

Eleanor Roosevelt, as the United States representative and chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, labored to create the Declaration. She devoted her life to human rights and, particularly in our country, to civil rights, and she saw clearly how the Declaration would create a new international standard against which we all would be measured. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who reminded us that human rights begin “in small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps in the world.” It is in those small places—our homes, schools, health clinics and market places—where women are lifting up their lives and the lives of their families. More women and girls are learning to read and write today, as nations—often for the first time—begin to invest in their education. Women are living longer and healthier lives, having fewer unwanted children, and surviving childbirth in greater numbers, as they gain access to health care and reproductive services. As they gain access to jobs and credit, women are discovering a new level of economic independence, and contributing more to their families and communities. And as a result of hard-won changes in laws and social attitudes, women are holding positions of power and authority as never before.

The accomplishments we have witnessed just this past year alone are remarkable. The government of Yemen has waived its tuition fees for elementary school girls to encourage them to go to school. Turkey has passed the Family Protection law making spousal abuse a crime. The nations of Cote D’Ivoire and Togo have approved statutes that ban the practice of female genital mutilation. And, earlier this year, the government of Senegal also banned the practice. Women in Nigeria, who have struggled 39 years for this moment, are celebrating the overturning of a traditional practice that denied widows inheritance rights. And for the first time, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia prosecuted the aiding and abetting of rape as a war crime.

Much of this progress has been sparked by the United Nation’s longstanding commitment to bringing women together in international forums, to talk about common challenges and forge a common future. It was not until the United Nations conference in Nairobi that domestic violence was recognized as a crime, and not a cultural tradition. It was not until the United Nations conference in Cairo that nations agreed that population and economic development must go hand in hand, and that women must be at the heart of our development efforts. It was not until 1994, when women came together in Beijing, that we said to the world once and for all, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.”

These United Nations conferences have not only triggered action on the part of governments around the world, but they have also encouraged the flowering of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and advocacy groups—groups that undertake activities critical to improving the lives of women in their countries. Groups like UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), the United Nations agency that works with NGOs around the world to advance the status of women, are investing in women’s education, promoting leadership training and expanding microcredit loans to women. In the process, they are also transforming women’s lives.

Nasri Hussein Adam lives in Somalia, where war has displaced many families and resulted in great human suffering. With UNIFEM’s support, she was trained in conflict resolution, and now encourages other women to become engaged in helping to build a more peaceful future. Rekha Dubey, who lives in Uttar Pradesh, India, was the only daughter in her family, and when her father died, she lost everything. Her uncle took the house, her in-laws were thrown out, and she lost her eldest son. Through UNIFEM, Rekha learned about her legal rights, and now she has her house and her son back again. Perhaps more importantly, she has her dignity back again as well. She is now running for elected office in her community.

For generations, women have been at the forefront of the battle for human rights and individual dignity. I have had the privilege of hearing many of their voices around the globe, sometimes raised in song, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a cry of anguish and sometimes in a burst of laughter. In Romania and Russia, where citizens have known only authoritarian rule, and there has been no tradition of democracy, I heard how women were struggling to breathe life into the institutions of civil society. In Ireland, I listened to Catholic and Protestant women who would meet, often over a cup of hot tea, to talk about how they would help overcome decades of distrust, and word side by side in their own communities to bring an end to the sectarian violence. In Guatemala and El Salvador, women on both sides of the armed conflicts wept over the loss of their husbands, sons, and fathers and spoke to me about how they had born the pain and humiliation of torture. Today, these same women have gained positions of power and influence and are busy rebuilding their countries and giving their children renewed hope for a peaceful future. And, in my own country, I’ve listened to the voices of women as they strive together to become equal partners at home, at work, and in the halls of government.

Poised as we are on the brink of the 21^st century, the voices of women around the world reflect our deepest yearnings of hope for a better future. And their stories help us measure how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go. No one can deny the extraordinary strides that women have made in the last half century. Yet no one can deny the great suffering and injustice that women and girls continue to experience every day, in every country. No one can deny the boundless energy and potential that remain untapped or the countless dreams that die unfulfilled.

At this unique milestone in human history, we must ask ourselves, “What has experience taught us that will help us secure a new era of freedom and equality among all people? What lessons can we take with us into the 21^st century that will help us unleash the full promise of every woman, man, boy, and girl?” One of the most powerful lessons we have learned from experience and history, confirmed at the U.N. conferences in Nairobi, Cairo and Beijing, is that a nation’s progress depends not only on protecting women’s fundamental human rights. It depends, as well, on ensuring women’s equal access to life’s basic tools of opportunity. No nation can hope to succeed in the global economy of the 21^st century if half its people lack the opportunity and the right to make the most of their God-given potential. No nation can hope to move forward when its women and children are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, when they have inadequate health care, poor access to family planning, or when they make up the vast majority of those who cannot read or write. No nation can hope to improve its quality of life when women are constrained inside social or cultural customs that impoverish their spirits and limit their aspirations.

In the last several decades, we have seen how the global economic revolution has transformed lives, many for the better. People have opportunities they never thought possible, and in places where they never dreamed they would see clean water, paved roads, children attending school, or access to health care. And yet, global economic change has not only made winners. It has made losers as well. Our challenge is to harness these vast forces of change for the benefit of all people. Whether we are talking about a rural area in South Asia or an inner city in the United States, microcredit—or the idea of offering small loans to the poor—is an invaluable tool for alleviating poverty, promoting self-sufficiency, and stimulating economic activity in some of the world’s most destitute and disadvantaged communities. For too long, many people—not only the poorest of the poor, but working people and others—have had to turn to the lenders in the community that extract the greatest prices for the money they give. Others have been shut out completely. The result has been to depress opportunity, not only for individuals, but also for families and for entire communities. Modest microcredit loans can transform lives and reclaim villages, rural areas and cities from decay and decline. Microcredit can help to reduce the number of people living in substandard conditions or extreme poverty.

I first heard about microcredit more than a decade ago when my husband, then the governor of Arkansas, and I were involved in looking for ways to create economic opportunity in the poorest sections of one of the poorer states in the United States. We know of the work of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the South Shore Bank in Chicago, and we reached out to representatives of both institutions to explain how this idea of very small amounts of credit (an idea that is contrary to conventional thinking about finance and economic development) could make such a difference. Based on reports from Bangladesh and Chicago, we knew something important was happening.

In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association has made it possible for poor women to learn about finance, and to borrow money and save money. When I visited, I met with hundreds of women, some of whom had walked for 12 or 15 hours to meet with me and tell me what small loans had meant to them. These were stories not just about what they were able to purchase with their loans, but stories of self-worth and potential. In Jahore, I met with 300 Hindu and Muslim women who had come together for the first time to tell me how their lives had been transformed by virtue of earning their own income. In one village, I saw women making steel and concrete beams that they would sell to other women who were using them to build houses.

In Managua, Nicaragua, I met 30 women who described how they had received small loans to start neighborhood bakeries and seamstress shops. One was making mosquito netting, and one was selling auto parts door to door. In Santiago, Chile, one woman told me that, as a seamstress, she could not compete with the larger factories, although she knew there was a market for her work. With a small loan, she was able to buy a high-speed sewing machine to replace her old, slower model. She said that when she got that new machine, she felt like a caged bird that had been set free.

I visited a microenterprise project in Denver, Colorado where women, many of them Hispanic Americans, received career counseling, vocational training and entrepreneurial technical assistance. Many had been on welfare and were looking for an opportunity to take the skills they had acquired and turn them into income. Many of these women were good bakers and good seamstresses. They could make alterations or provide food to small restaurants, but they did not have access to credit to get started. One woman said something I have never forgotten when she described what it was like trying to get a loan from her local bank. Although she was a hard worker and she had a good product to sell, the bank turned her away because the amount of money it would have taken to process her loan was not, the bank’s eyes, worth the investment. She said, “Too many great ideas die in the parking lots of banks.”

What bankers are now learning is that they would be very happy to have more customers like these. The default rate on microcredit loans is extremely low, about 2.2 percent. If more banks understood the tenacity, the commitment, and the entrepreneurial spirit of people like these who are given a chance to help themselves, not only would we go a long way toward extending more credit, but we would also go a long way toward eliminating many of the unfortunate stereotypes about the poor.

Without the chance to participate as equals in the economic life of their communities women will continue to suffer. Yet, in times of crisis, even where progress is being made, we know that women are the first to lose their hard-earned gains. Recent experience has shown that many countries in the throes of the current global financial crisis have turned back the clock to the days when women were the last hired and the first fired. High unemployment and other scarcities have also made women, often members of ethnic minorities, the victims of assault and harassment. In countries embroiled in armed conflicts, women and children make up the vast surge of humanity fleeing the violence as refugees. And too often, their suffering is compounded when women are used as weapons of war—brutally raped and humiliated by soldiers on both sides.

Perhaps the most egregious and systematic trampling of the fundamental human rights of women is taking place today in Afghanistan under the iron rule of the Taliban. Where women used to make up 40 percent of the country’s doctors, they are now forbidden to practice. Where women were once half of Afghanistan’s teachers, they are now barred from teaching. Where girls used to go to school regularly, the doors of those schools are now slammed shut. We have all heard the terrible stories: An elderly woman was flogged with a metal cable until her leg was broken because a bit of her ankle was showing under her burqa, the garment women wear to cover themselves from head to toe. Thousands of war widows (in many cases, the sole support of their families) were forced to beg on the streets to feed their children because they were forbidden to work.

The Taliban has imposed a Draconian Catch-22 on the country, whereby health care for women has all but vanished because of their rules against male doctors treating women. I read about a seriously burned woman who died a terrible death, and another with appendicitis who died after being turned away from two hospitals. And I have read stories of countless women and children whose health is deteriorating every single day. This unbearable suffering led one Afghan women to lament, “A rock or a bomb may kill all members of a family at once, but this is a slow death which is more painful.”

Some still manage to claim that these atrocities are cultural. However, increasingly the world recognizes that they are criminal. I am proud that many countries are now taking action, including the United States. Last year the United States provided $3.9 million for the education and health training of Afghan women and girls, and we remain committed to continuing these activities and creating new programs to support efforts to secure the human rights of Afghan women as well as their access to health and education. We cannot allow these crimes against women and girls—and truly against all of humanity—to continue with impunity. We must all act.

Trafficking in women and girls is another widespread international human rights violation that will continue to haunt us into the 21^st century if we do not act now. An estimated one to two million women and girls are trafficked every year around the world—forced into labor, domestic servitude, or sexual exploitation. Women sold as domestics and slaves in illegal sweatshops are sometimes literally worked to death. And women and children trafficked into the sex industry are exposed to deadly diseases, including HIV and AIDS.

In Northern Thailand, I have spoken to young girls whose parents sold them as prostitutes and who are now dying of AIDS. And when I was in the Ukraine, women came up to me in tears, not knowing why the young women in their communities were disappearing. These young women answered ads, for positions such as child care providers or waitresses, that promised a much better future in another place, but they were never heard from again. Trafficking in women is not just an egregious violation of the human rights of women and girls. It is an international criminal activity, with traffickers operating boldly across international borders. Once again, I am pleased that nations around the world are mobilizing their resources to put a stop to this criminal and inhumane activity.

This spring, the United Nations began negotiating a protocol on trafficking women and children as part of the Organized Crime Convention. The United States is one of the leaders in developing this document. This instrument of international cooperation will set new standards for our efforts to prevent trafficking, punish traffickers, and protect its victims, and will strengthen the global fight to end this pervasive human rights violation and transnational crime. There are also ongoing multilateral efforts. For example, the United States is working closely with the governments of Italy, Israel, Finland, and Ukraine on this critical issue.

Another powerful lesson we must heed as we move into the next century is that, for women to advance, so must the forces of democracy. The rights that we all hold so precious in our lives—freedom of conscience, religion, expression and association—can only be protected and expanded when democracy flourishes. And by democracy, I mean more than free and fair elections. We must also fortify the institutions of civil society, like labor unions, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups and free press. We must protect these institutions with the rule of law. Without a fair legal system, without an independent judiciary, without laws being fairly and equitably applied, our basic rights and freedoms will always be in danger.

The rule of law has become a particularly effective tool in the fight against domestic violence around the world. When I was in El Salvador last year, I saw an exhibit hanging on the wall of a women’s center. It displayed the weapons that have been used to batter and violate women, including knives, machetes, and wooden clubs. And I heard the story of Maria, a 32-year-old mother of two, who suffered years of violence because she was afraid to act due to fear of reprisals against her children. Yet thanks to new public outreach campaigns, and the passage of historic legal reforms, domestic violence is finally being called what it is—a criminal offense. Finally, women like Maria, who suffered so long in silence, are being protected and are once again finding their voices.

As more governments offer and guarantee increased rights and freedoms, strengthen the rule of law, and provide greater opportunities for their citizens, we see the forces of democracy taking hold around the world. Even within the last ten years, as more and more nations recognize that strong democratic institutions assure respect for human rights and a better quality of life for all citizens, the number of elected democracies has doubled. Who would have imagined even a few decades ago that President Clinton and I would have the honor of receiving three world leaders at the White House? These world leaders who have exchanged the walls of prison for the halls of government. Kim Dei Jung of the Republic of Korea, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and Czech president Vaclav Havel all suffered repression and imprisonment. Yet forgiveness and the spirit of humanity have since defined their leadership—teaching us all that the longing for freedom and dignity can never be stamped out and will always triumph.

Sadly, though, some continue to deny these lessons of history and experience. Some governments continue to believe that the repression of basic human rights will create order and that economic liberty can compensate for the denial of individual human liberty. But as President Clinton warned earlier this year in San Francisco, in today’s world, nations “simply cannot purchase stability at the expense of freedom.” In the long run, it will not work.

We will only learn these critical lessons about sustaining human rights and women’s rights if we continue to listen and learn from one another. We must continue to meet together—in international forums and in small groups—to exchange ideas, share stories and listen to the vital voices of freedom. I recently traveled to Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, to listen and to witness the progress that women are making in that region, in order to better understand the challenges they continue to face. I was inspired by the extraordinary spirit and courage of women who are struggling to improve their lives and gain their basic human rights. But I was also struck, on the one hand, by the richness and diversity of their cultures and customs, and, on the other, by the dreams that we share and the common goals toward which we too strive.

In an effort to create another forum in which the vital voices of women could be heard, last June, during the President’s trip to China, I was pleased to announce that the United States would sponsor a series of exchange programs to bring Chinese women together with their counterparts in the United States. In March, a diverse delegation arrived in this country, which included a woman who runs a cable station, another who runs a women’s hotline, and a remarkable woman lawyer who heads the women’s law clinic that I visited in Beijing. The group met with American women leaders in government, politics, education, and business. This exchange continues the invaluable tradition of cultural and political exchanges that have helped strengthen the forces of democracy in so many countries over the years. I am pleased that, with the strong support of the United States Information Agency, the President’s budget includes funding to continue this exchange program into the coming year.

It was in preparation for our trip to China that I heard this wonderful saying, “Women hold up half the sky.” This single sentence offers a powerful image of what women do every single day, in every country, as they struggle to raise their families, pass on the values and traditions of their culture, protect their rights and participate fully in the life of their communities. This message of hope, carried deep within every woman’s heart, is universal. But if we are to fulfill this hope in the 21^st century, we must acknowledge the very real challenges that remain before us. Women cannot hold up half the sky if the vast majority of women and girls are robbed of the education they need to thrive in the future. Women cannot hold up half the sky if they are denied the loans and credit they need to lift up themselves and their families. Women cannot hold up half the sky if they are victims of abuse in their own homes, or are kidnapped or sold into marriage or slavery. Women cannot hold up half the sky if they are denied the freedom to plan their own families. Women can only hold up half the sky if their feet are planted firmly in the soil of freedom and equal justice.

I am grateful for the work that agencies around the world—from the largest national government, to the smallest village council—from the tiniest NGO to the far-reaching web of United Nations agencies—have done, and will continue to do. These organizations strive to create a world in which all citizens enjoy fundamental rights and liberties, in which all children are valued and given equal opportunities, and in which every citizen can live free from fear, and filled with hope. My hope is that, as we enter the next century, we will not only continue to see progress, but advancements in every part of the world. Only then will we be able to say honestly that—yes—women not only can, but do hold up half the sky.

Featured Photo: cc/(Luz Adriana Villa)