Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is International Women's Day.

With me to discuss International Women's Day, and particularly the challenges facing adolescent girls around the world, is Anne Norris.

Anne is a senior fellow for women in foreign policy at the Council. She has held several posts in the U.S. government. She has been a principal deputy assistant secretary of state

for legislative affairs, a senior advisor at the state department, and counselor to the ambassador at large

for global women's issues, and senior foreign policy and defense advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer

of California. Anne wrote the council report, renewing the global architecture for gender

equality in 2022. And thank you for joining me on the president's inbox. Thank you very much for

having me today. Now, Friday is International Women's Day. And when I asked you to come on

the president's inbox, you immediately said we should talk about the challenges that adolescent girls around the world face.

Why?

I think there's been this tremendous focus on gender equality.

And there's been a lot of work done on younger girls and there's been a lot of work done on women.

But there's this period in a girl's life, roughly from the ages of 10 to 19,

when the trajectory of their life can really go one way or the other.

And stepping in at that point to make sure that girls are able to continue their education,

to be free from violence, to have opportunity, and to feel like

they're valued members of their community can really have a tremendous impact. And too often,

that demographic just gets kind of lost. And once they're kind of lost from protections and

services, their lives in many ways, end up not being where we want them to go.

So we're talking about a fairly substantial demographic. Aren't we? And I've seen numbers of

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