Thank you very much, Gertrude Mangela, 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.

Even then, she inspired starkly different emotions. Liberals loved her. Conservatives?

Well, conservatives didn't. As the first baby boomer first lady, Hillary Rotom Clinton was an

inspiration to many and a subject of infuriation to others. Alternately caricatured as a pioneering

woman leader and as a lady-mic Beth, she was an unelected policy force in her husband's

administration, which shouldn't have been surprising. After all, Bill Clinton had told voters in 1992

that they'd be getting two for the price of one if they sent the couple to the White House.

The best of Hillary Clinton was on display during a single speech in Beijing in the late summer of 1995.

It was nearly a year after voters had firmly rejected the course of her husband's presidency

in the 1994 midterm Republican landslide. 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.

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