"What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here."
These are the words of Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered at the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. (See the full-speech transcript below.) They are words exemplary of the principles that Clinton has made central to her public policy throughout her career. And which, as it turns out, was the topic of this September 23, 2014 talk before Goldman Sachs Officials honoring 10,000 women entrepreneurs. It is one of the talks that Bernie Sanders has been asking Clinton to publicize but which has been on the web since October 2014. (Hillary Clinton begins speaking at the 3:50 mark.)
But beside considering the Beijing and the Goldman Sachs videos as testaments of Clinton's consistent concern for improving the lives of women in all parts of the world and at all economic levels, I should like to explain why so many of us care to defend Hillary Clinton's record.
Millennial voters who grew up during -- or were born after -- the Bill Clinton presidency, have understandably found the Baby Boomer loyalty to and support of our former First Lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State, to be utterly inexplicable. But to the many Boomers supporting her, there is little if any mystery, given that it is Hillary Rodham Clinton's history itself that we share and that compels us to be loyal and even nostalgic. We even understand the flip flops regarding implementing liberal policies by the Clintons, given the degree of adversity facing liberal legislation required backtracking to salvage what gains could be pushed through a Republican-controlled Congress during the 1990s, all of which required giving some to gain some. Despite the compromises, we knew the Clintons were the main route for governmental progress.
Amid that history, perhaps no moment epitomizes Hillary Clinton's courage, activism, brilliance and defiance of convention and imposed authority than her challenge posed to the Chinese government when she spoke before the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing on 5 September 1995.
It was a moment I was reminded of when Clinton took on Senator Bernie Sanders in the Thursday, February 4, MSNBC Debate in Durham, New Hampshire. It was in particular the moment that Clinton finally confronted one of the nagging complaints that the Left has had about her ever since she cast her 2002 Senatorial vote sanctioning US entry into Iraq. When Senator Sanders during the debate copy-catted then-Senator Obama in his 2008 debate with Clinton by raising her Iraq vote, he no doubt wished it would sink Clinton's chances to become President as it had done then. But this time Clinton was ready with what was the most resoundingly-singular soundbite of the night, and one that rings out, and will likely continue ringing, with clarion urgency.
"A vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS. We have to look at the threats that we face right now."
With this well-turned and agonizingly-urgent retort, Clinton finally carved out a path through the granite-like sediment of blame and condemnation that had been heaped around her by the Left for fourteen years. A blame that should never have proved so formidable an impediment to her political ambitions given that she was Senator to New York during 9/11 and throughout the years in which New Yorkers struggled to recover from the war visited on it by al-Qaeda's pilot hijackers. Clinton has been unfairly castigated considering that the majority of Congress took then-Secretary of State Colin Powell for his word when he testified that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. It was also the majority opinion of the constituency Clinton served in New York State, as well as in the country, as disclosed shortly after the 9/11 attacks, by a Gallup poll that showed 74% of Americans wanted to enter Iraq, with just 20% of Americans opposed. By August 2002, Gallup reported that a near-unanimous majority believed that the Iraqi government trains and supports terrorists, with 86% stating they think "Saddam Hussein is involved in supporting terrorist groups that have plans to attack the United States."
While many of us are rightly critical of Senator Clinton's vote, we should simultaneously consider that when she voted, she may have remembered how her husband had hesitated to embroil the US in the Balkans until after Milosevic's ethnic cleansing was well underway, and that he failed to even intervene on the Rwandan genocide. But while this confluence of hostilities, misjudgments, and constituency make Clinton's vote more understandable, the same man who wants us to consider that his Vermont constituency comprised of rural hunters accounts for why he voted against the Brady Bill and several other bills limiting access to firearms, he at the same time wants us to forget that Clinton too had a constituency to whom she had a duty to ensure there would never again be another 9/11 on American soil. But if Sanders persists in blaming Clinton, he also persists in blaming the majority of polled Americans who Senator Clinton was representing, that is many of us who will be voting in the primaries and the general election.
When Clinton snapped back at Sanders Thursday night about her vote, I could not but remember the firm tone she took as First Lady as she distinguished herself from all other First Ladies (with the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt) upon addressing the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, 5 September 1995, in Beijing, China. It more than any other speech by Clinton voices her determination to right the social injustices and bigotries, the economic, racial, religious and gender inequalities of not just Americans but of all citizens around the globe.
You can watch and hear Clinton deliver her remarks in the Beijing video above while reading along from the text below.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session
Thank you very much, Gertrude Mongella, for your dedicated work that has brought us to this point, distinguished delegates, and guests:
I would like to thank the Secretary General for inviting me to be part of this important United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration, a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in the community, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens, and leaders.
It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country. We come together in fields and factories, in village markets and supermarkets, in living rooms and board rooms. Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concern. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may appear, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future, and we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world, and in so doing bring new strength and stability to families as well.
By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in our lives -- the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of our countries.
There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou -- the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world's most pressing problems. Wasn't it after all -- after the women's conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?
Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum. In that forum, we talked about ways that government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working to address the health problems of women and girls. Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local -- and highly successful -- programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.
What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.
Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children, and families. Over the past two and a half years, I've had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world.
I have met new mothers in Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care. I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in safe, and nurturing after-school centers. I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping to build a new democracy. I have met with the leading women of my own hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for children in their countries. I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, or rickshaws, or thread in order to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. I have met the doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.
The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world's population, 70% of the world's poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world's children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued -- not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.
At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.
Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own country, women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can't afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.
I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air, and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who find that, after raising their families, their skills and life experiences are not valued in the marketplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, or fast food chefs so that they can be at home during the day with their children; and for women everywhere who simply don't have time to do everything they are called upon to do each and every day.
Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.
We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.
Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments -- here and around the world -- accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. The -- The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one -- No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture.
Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world's refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse. I believe that now, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.
These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:
It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.
It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed -- and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.
It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.
It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.
It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.
It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely -- and the right to be heard.
Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries, if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure. It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend -- or have been prohibited from fully taking part.
Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.
In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of Women's Suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle, before that happened, on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America's most divisive philosophical wars. But it was a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.
But we have also been reminded, in V-J Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and to build a better world. We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war. But we have not solved older, deeply-rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world's population.
Now it is the time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care. Families rely on women for labor in the home. And increasingly, everywhere, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives.
As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes -- the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.
Let -- Let this conference be our -- and the world's -- call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see -- for our children and our grandchildren.
The time is now. We must move beyond rhetoric. We must move beyond recognition of problems to working together, to have the comment efforts to build that common ground we hope to see.
God's blessing on you, your work, and all who will benefit from it.
Godspeed and thank you very much.
This post was altered on February 6, 2016 to include the Hillary Clinton Goldman Sachs Video released on youtube.com October, 2014 and to change the title to announce it. The original title was, Recalling Hillary Rodham Clinton's Defiant Defense of Women in Beijing, 1995. The post was altered again on November 8, 2016, to include the date and location of the Thursday, February 4, MSNBC debate in Durham, New Hampshire. Prior to this the debate was referred to as the Thursday Night Debate in New Hampshire.