A creative play on Bill Clinton’s speech to the 2012 Democratic Convention recast as a speech for the women’s movement and gender equality

 

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you

(Sustained cheers, applause.)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now, fellow citizens, wherever you happen to live, we are here to endorse a movement that will deliver us a rebalanced world. And I’ve got one in mind. (Cheers, applause.)

I want to nominate a movement that has been at the forefront of advocating for gender equality even while it has seen its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. A movement that has advocated gender inclusive strategies to strengthen weak economies and ensure that women, as well as men, are productive and engaged in work and family life.

A movement whose strategies will put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that when women are empowered, their families are empowered and they are able to feed their children and keep their hopes alive.

I want to nominate a movement that is cool on the outside and burning for a just and equitable world on the inside. A movement that believes we can build a new economy driven by gender aware policies that encourage fairness and justice, innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A movement that had the good sense to marry conviction with concerted action. (Cheers.)

I want the women’s movement to inspire us all to deliver a new world for women and men and I proudly nominate it as the standard bearer of a rebalanced world. (Cheers, applause.)

You know – (Cheers, applause) I – (Cheers, applause)

Now, folks, in Tampa, we heard a lot of talk – (laughter) – about how the women’s movement doesn’t believe in corporate investment and individual initiative, how it wants everyone to be dependent on women, and especially, feminists, and how bad the movement is for men and the economy.

The conservative narrative is that men need to lead and women need to follow. Even if it is not expressed that way in words, it certainly is in actions. Just look around at the paucity of women in parliaments, as religious and faith based leaders, in Board rooms, writing Op Ed pieces, with their own bank accounts, as partners of Fortune 500 companies, as equal breadwinners, as those who have land rights as the percentage of those who have access to health care and education. We are failing women and we are failing families and the planet. Aung San Suu Kyi (Cheers, applause) Chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma, once said “The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.”

Those of us advocating for a gender inclusive society think the world works better with women supported to realize their full potential, where women and men who are poor or who have low incomes have real opportunities to work for a brighter future, with communities, business and government working together to promote true equality between women and men for a shared prosperity. We think “we are committed to gender equality in all aspects of life” is a better philosophy than “men have access to the full range of human rights while women remain on the margins.” (Cheers, applause.) It is.

So, who’s right? (Cheers.) Well, former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan put it best when he famously said, “there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.” And if you think that that’s just the opinion of a supreme diplomat and bureaucrat then how about the opinion of philanthropist and business man, Bill Gates, “If you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in (your) country…you’re not going to get close to the top ten.” In Liberia, women led a peace movement that overthrew a dictator, and ended a 14 year civil war. A female President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, invested in peace and nation building that cleared $4.9 billion of debt and increased the country’s budget almost four-fold. And it earned her the Nobel Peace Prize. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, as you can see, there’s – (Cheers, applause.) – there’s a reason for this focus on gender equality. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics (Cheers, applause.)Why? Because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth. (Cheers, applause.) When you stifle women’s potential, when you don’t invest in their productivity, it doesn’t just cut off the women who are affected, it hurts us all. (Cheers, applause.) We know that investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs and new wealth for all the rest of us. (Cheers, applause.)

We know that gender inequality also contributes to the non-monetary aspects of poverty – lack of security, opportunity and empowerment – that lower the quality of life for both men and women. While women and girls bear the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities, the costs cut broadly across society, ultimately hindering development and poverty reduction.

Now, there’s something I’ve noticed lately. You probably have too. And it’s this. Though I often disagree with those who are conservative, I never learned to repel them the way the far right that now controls the conservative lobby seems to repel those of us supporting a gender inclusive world. After all, voting rights for women in the US were a Republican initiative that was passed under a Democrat named Woodrow Wilson, same for Both Civil Rights Acts both passed with massive Republican support. More recently as governor, I worked with President Reagan on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we’ve done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Throughout the world, we need to work with men and women who are focused on solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting all the time (Cheers, applause.)

And so here’s what I want to say to you, and here’s what I want people around the world to think about. When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be good. But what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation. (Cheers, applause.) What works in the real world is cooperation, business and government, communities and movements, foundations and universities.

Now, why is this true? Why does cooperation work better than constant conflict?

Because nobody’s right all the time and a broken clock is right twice a day. (Cheers, applause.)

And every one of us – every one of us and every one of them – we’re compelled to live our lives between those two extremes, knowing we’re never going to be right all the time and hoping we’re right more than twice a day. (Laughter).

Unfortunately, the conservative movement doesn’t see it that way. They think the women’s movement is the enemy, and compromise is weakness. (Boos.) They beat a conservative representative with almost a hundred percent voting record on every conservative score because he said he realized that he did not have to be anti the women’s movement to disagree with them. Well, that was a nonstarter and they threw him out. (Laughter, applause.)

One of the main reasons we support the women’s movement is that it is still committed to constructive cooperation and building a global consensus to advance gender equality. (Cheers, applause). Look at its record. Look at its record. The women’s movement’s record on peace-making, peace-keeping, peace-building and conflict building is a tribute to its strength, and judgment, and to its preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

I’m also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country in peace activism and to the women’s movement for helping to advocate for peace and for the continued efforts in many countries to establish Departments of Peace and Cooperation.

The women’s movement has also sought to work with conservatives on employment, education, health and participation for all. But that didn’t work out so well. Probably because, the conservative leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years earlier, their No. 1 priority was not ensure that women had equal access to paid work, but to maintain the status quo. (Mixed cheers and boos, applause.) (Chuckles). Well, wait a minute, Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we’re going to keep the women’s movement on the job. In fact we’re going to get behind the women’s movement with a force so powerful it will be indomitable. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, are you ready for that? (Cheers, applause.) Are you willing to work for it? Oh, wait a minute. In Tampa, the conservative argument against the women’s movement was pretty simple: we left a total mess for the women’s movement with its promise of a rebalanced world, it doesn’t look like it will clean it up fast enough, so put us back in. (Laughter, applause.)

And this is important — they convinced me they were honorable people who believed what they said and that they’re going to keep ever commitment they’ve made. We’ve just got to make sure the world knows what those commitments are – (Cheers, applause) – because in order to look like an acceptable alternative to the women’s movement, they couldn’t say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years.

They couldn’t because they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: including unregulated financial markets, trillions of dollars in defence expenditure, continued commitment to unsustainable energy and a, massive reduction in programs for health care. Also cuts in programs addressing violence against women, in programs that help women to get an education, a decent job and opportunities for participation — all designed to increase the wellbeing of women, and that of their families and communities. As another president once said— there they go again.

These same old policies include support for religious groups that are pro-life and not pro-choice, including the Catholic Church and for people who support the views of organizations like the the Muslim Brotherhood. Groups with members who hold the view that the authentic role of women is exclusively being wife and mother. A Brotherhood that proclaims “a woman takes pleasure in being a follower and finds ease in obeying a husband who loves her. A woman cannot take a decision and handle the consequence of that decision. But men can.”

There is a quote by an unknown author who said “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.”

Those who limit women’s freedom, deprive women of their rights or place them in a subordinate position believe that the political cost of doing so is very low.

I like the argument for the women’s movement a lot better. The women’s movement has articulated how it would heal a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, begin the long hard road to recovery, and lay the foundation for a well-balanced society and economy that will support millions of women and men to lead fulfilling and productive lives with healthy families, vibrant decision-making, and the sustained wellbeing of their communities. It has laid out a plan to address the deliberate and sustained attacks on, and domination over, women across the globe – what Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn in their book Half the Sky, Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, rightly call gendercide.

This investment in women, and in women’s participation in business and political leadership, is what we need to address some of the world’s biggest problems, including extreme poverty. Research in some countries has shown that an increase in women’s representation in parliament reduces corruption and increases economic growth. By directing foreign aid to invest in women’s political and economic participation we are building the foundations for a society to trade and that can effectively govern its way out of poverty.(Cheers, applause.)

I understand the challenge we face. I know many citizens are still angry and frustrated with the economy. However the women’s movement has outlined a plan that will see violence worldwide decreasing and productivity increasing. Women’s role in combating corruption will help countries to thrive and ensure work for all who need it together with access to education, health care and housing. We’ve seen the critical role that women have played in advancing women’s rights in the midst of the democratic uprisings around the world.

I could glimpse what was possible in 1994 and early 1995 and if my wife were President I have no doubt that we would have seen greater progress toward gender equality And of course she may still have her time. Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn’t feel it. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in history. If we had held to the vision of the women’s movement –gender equality in all aspects of human life – then our progress would have been far reaching.

The women’s movement is facing a challenging global environment in introducing the kind of sweeping change and reform required for women to achieve true equality. But conditions are improving in at least some areas and if you’ll give your vote to the women’s movement then you will feel this change. It will be for a world transformed. (Cheers, applause.)

Folks, whether you believe what I just said or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know that I believe it. With all my heart I believe it. (Cheers, applause.)

Now why do I believe it?

I’m fixing to tell you why. I believe it because the approach of the women’s movement embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction the world must take to build a global community of shared opportunities, shared rights and responsibilities, and shared prosperity.

So let’s get back to the story. In 2010, as the women’s movement stepped up its campaign for gender equality, it unified its messages in making the case for a gender equal world and we could see how things began to turn around in countries where the women’s movement was gaining momentum and campaigns were having an impact.

The program it proposed would save and create millions of jobs for women and men. But last year, the conservatives blocked the women’s movement’s gender equality plan, costing the global economy millions of new jobs. By helping women as well as men toward economic self-sufficiency with program of direct aid, rights education, job skills training and small business development we will be investing in the majority of the population rather than the minority.

So here’s another jobs score: women’s movement: millions++, conservative movement: zero. (Cheers, applause.)

During this period – (Cheers, applause) – during this period, the women’s movement laid out a plan for millions of new jobs— that’s the first time jobs would increase in countries like the US since the 1990s. (Cheers, applause.) And I’ll tell you something else. The gender inclusive approach works. (Cheers, applause.) It will save millions of jobs all over the world. That’s why even those who aren’t traditionally women’s rights supporters support it. They needed to save jobs too. Like I said, we’re all in this together.

Now in countries where a gender inclusive approach has been adopted, there are millions more people working in governments, companies and organizations. In other countries, the conservative movement has opposed the plan to introduce a gender inclusive approach. (Boos.) So here’s another jobs score. (Laughter.) Women’s movement millions++, conservative movement: zero. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, the agreement the women’s rights movement made with management, labor and environmental groups to give women equal access to land, to financial inclusion and microfinance programs over the next decade is another good deal: it will add millions of good jobs to the global economy over the next few years. (Cheers, applause.)

The women’s movement’s renewable energy plan will help too —this plan is designed to ensure that both women and men participate at all levels in the management of natural resources.  That they contribute to the creation of jobs and livelihoods and support sustainable, safe energy solutions that ease women’s burden of work.  This plan will support the development and use of clean energy solutions, such as solar and wind energy; and promote the active participation of women in decision-making. (Cheers, applause.)

Of course we need a lot more new jobs. But there are already millions of jobs open and unfilled in the world today, mostly because people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do them. So, even as we get women and men more jobs, we have to prepare them for the new jobs that are actually going to be created. The old economy is not coming back. We’ve got to build a new one and educate people to do these jobs. (Cheers, applause).

The women’s movement is committed to access to health care, decent work and decision-making at all levels – and to education.  There is a powerful human rights argument and a strong developmental case for achieving gender equality in education. It is an affordable investment with high returns. When girls are educated, livelihoods are improved, education is valued, and civic responsibility is enhanced. In most societies, however, deep-seated inequalities result in unequal access to and performance in education.

Although the global expansion of primary education has brought greater gender parity, too many girls and women still remain excluded from learning.  A total of 28 countries had not achieved gender parity in 2010.  The women’s movement has a plan for quality, inclusive education, in and out of schools.  It also has a plan to increase female literacy: a human right and a key to improving livelihoods, child and maternal health.

Giving young women and young men access to college education is another priority.  Here the student loan that is more important than ever. Here’s what it does – (cheers, applause). You need to tell every person where you live about this. It gives students the right to repay those loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It means no one will have to drop-out of college for fear they can’t repay their debt.

And it means – (cheers, applause.) – it means if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a shopkeeper, a factory worker, a nurse, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in a little rural area, they won’t have to turn those jobs down because they don’t pay enough to repay their debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This will change the future for young people globally. (Cheers, applause.)

I don’t know about you – (cheers, applause) – but on these issues, I know we’re better off because the women’s movement drove these decisions. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, that brings me to health care. (Cheers, applause.) And the conservative campaign call it, derisively, Gendercare and say it’s a feminist takeover of health care, a disaster and this if we’ll just elect them they’ll repeal it. Well, are they right?

Let’s look at the situation.
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With the women’s movement driving policies, millions of seniors will receive preventive care, all the way from breast cancer screenings to tests for heart problems and scores of other things. And young people will get them too. After going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade, with the women’s movement’s policies, health care costs are set to drop to under 4 percent in both years for the first time in 50 years. (Cheers, applause.) 

The women’s movement is a strong advocate for women having complete control over their bodies and life choices. Women and adolescent girls must have the right to make their own decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing, and be able to choose whether, when and how many children to have. The ability to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is essential to women’s equality, autonomy, and dignity, with implications for every aspect of her life – her educational aspirations, career goals, economic status, and, more broadly, her ability to live the life she planned. Despite the formal existence in a number of countries of this right to choose, even in those countries, for many women access to sexual and reproductive health care is so regulated so that it’s almost, or entirely, out of reach. And the struggle is getting worse. Many more countries don’t allow women access to safe abortion and, as a result almost 50,000 women die each year. The women’s movement’s policies will save lives and restore choice for women worldwide. (Cheers, applause.)

The women’s movement’s commitment to eliminating violence against women and men is absolute. Political and legislative change in relation to eliminating violence against women is happening slowly – and not soon enough for the millions of women who experience some form of sexual or domestic violence. The women’s movement is proposing programs and policies designed to drastically reduce gender based violence.

So, let me ask you something. Will we better off because the women’s movement will fight for it and pass it? (Cheers, applause.) You bet we will be.

Countries may have high per capita income but have a widening gap between employment of women and men. In part this is due to the phenomenon of care labor where child labor is shouldered almost exclusively by women and is also largely unrecognized by governments and economic markets. The women’s movement is advocating for a system that will recognize and reward women’s role in the informal economy and their role in production of goods and services in the household. It will introduce policies and systems to support sharing of household duties between men and women as an important component of gender equality. It will reshape the economy to advance women’s rights and justice.

Now, let’s talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying countries like the US to borrow money, to hold their money for them.

But it will become a big problem for us when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise. We’ve got to deal with this big long-term debt problem or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger and bigger percentage of the federal budget we’d rather spend on education and health care and science and technology. We’ve got to deal with it.

Now, what has the women’s movement committed to? In countries like the US it has offered a reasonable plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for every $1 of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. This includes a massive reduction in military spending and an increase in taxes for those earning over $250,000 per annum. It also includes the introduction of a Tobin Tax as excise tax on cross-border currency transactions taxes to both tame currency market volatility and restore economic sovereignty. The revenue will go to global priorities that advance gender equality.

Now, I think the women’s movement’s plan is way better than the conservative movement’s plan. First, the conservative movement plan failed the first test of fiscal responsibility. The numbers just don’t add up. (Laughter, applause.)

I mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem? Somebody says ‘oh we’ve got a big debt problem. We’ve got to reduce the debt.’ So, what’s the first thing you say we’re going to do? Well, to reduce the debt, we’re going to have another $5 trillion in tax cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. So we’ll make the debt hole bigger before we start to get out of it.

Now, when you say, what are you going to do about this $5 trillion you just added on? They say they’ll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code.

So then you ask “which loopholes and how much?”

You know what they say? “See me after the election.” (Laughter.)

I’m not making it up. That’s their position. See me about that after the election.

Now, people ask me all the time how the women’s movement can deliver a surplus budget. What new ideas do we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a $5 trillion tax cut – in a debt reduction plan?— the arithmetic tells us, no matter what they say, one of three things is about to happen.

1) assuming the conservative movement tries to do what they say they’ll do, cover it by deductions, they’ll have to eliminate so many deductions, like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving, that middle class families will see their tax bill go up $2,000 year while people making over $3 million a year get will still get a $250,000 dollar tax cut. (Boos); or

2) they’ll have to cut so much spending that they’ll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they’ll cut way back on financial grants for students, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help families that are poor and low-income, or

3) they’ll do what they’ve been doing for thirty plus years now— cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, conservative economic policies have doubled or quadrupled the debt, depending on who’s been in office over the last couple of decades. We simply can’t afford to double-down on trickle-down.

The women’s movement’s plan will deliver gender equality, cut the debt, honor our values, and brighten the future for women and men, our children, our families and our world. It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test. (Cheers, applause.)

My fellow citizens, you have to decide what kind of a world you want to live in. If you want a winner-take-all, you’re-on-your-own and women-remain-second class-citizens world then you should support the conservative ticket. If you want a world of shared rights, opportunities and responsibilities— a “we’re all in it together” society where gender equality is a cornerstone and shared prosperity and humanity is a touchstone, you should vote for the women’s movement.

If you want every citizen to vote and you think it’s wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of people who are younger, poorer, in the minority and/or have a disability then you should support the women’s movement. If you think the women’s movement was right to open the doors of opportunity to young immigrants who want to go to college or serve as peace builders you should vote for the women’s movement. If you want a future of shared peace, prosperity, where poverty is declining, particularly the feminization of poverty, and where the dream of world peace is kept alive then you should vote for the women’s movement.

I love our planet— and I know we’re becoming more aware of what we need to do. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we’ve always come out realizing what’s needed to rebalance the world. And we finally have the chance to do this together. We can champion the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was created in 1948 as a dynamic global commitment for us individually and collectively to become kinder, more humane and fully committed to gender equality as both a means and an end.

If that’s what you believe, if that’s what you want, as I do, we must support the women’s movement for a gender inclusive world. The time is now.

God bless you. Peace. Shalom. Salaam. Aleikum.