The day after Andover was out for winter term, I was in Manhattan with my mother who had flown in from Beijing. We both checked into the hotel and rushed to get ready for the three day "Women in the World" conference my mother was attending.
The star-studded guest speakers line up was jaw-dropping. I was looking forward to sitting before and asking questions of Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep, Queen Rania, Christine Amanpour, Katie Couric, Campbell Brown, Diane Sawyer, and Juju Chang, and some other female business, media and political/feminist leaders.
The conference was held in a fancy midtown hotel decorated with surveillance and security equipment, spotted with Secret Service lurking near curtains and doors. The press lined up outside the hotel as the speakers arrived for the dinner. I sat at a table of complete strangers, far to the side of the room away from the celebrities in the middle, that turned out to be filled with the most interesting of guests (one of which was the best-selling author of one of my favorite controversial non-fiction Becoming Madame Mao and another that was a 98' Andover alumnae).
At that evening's three course dinner decorated with a lavish butterfly theme and bright orange (to blatantly advertise the sponsor's new laptops) with hundreds of people (mainly women in their 50s), the dinner enjoyed an inspiring speech and toast by Melanne Verveer - the U.S. Ambassador-at-large on Global Women's Issues. Here, she said (to quote loosely): "The 19th century was defined by the fight against slavery. The 20th was defined by the struggle for civil rights. And the 2st century will be defined by the quest for women's rights." This was a point later paraphrased by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her speech. Coming from two of the major foriegn-policy gurus of the United States, the radical role they saw women's rights playing in the future discussion of international relations and major issues was none other than an astounding level of foresight and confidence in this era's possibilities for unlocking women's rights and the potential of women.
Both Clinton and Verveer spoke that night
How women viewed the world, and how women participated in shaping the world, has never been an important question in international relations until more recent decades. In modern international relations discussion (which I am studying now), feminism is placed alongside the great schools of thought i.e. realism, liberalism, marxism, constructivism as an explanation of historical and current international trends, as well as being a valid direction for future foreign policy.
The school of thought called 'feminism' is based on the idea that gender-inequality, gender-conflicts and male dominance are fundamentals in understanding the functions of nations and peoples. This school seeks to create a new world order where inequalities between genders are eliminated, and equality is domestically and internationally enforced. They believe that violations of women's rights, such as sexual slavery, genital mutilation, honor killings, denial of access to education, legal and social acceptance of abuse against women, should be on par with issues such as censorship, liberalizing trade, nuclear nonproliferation, and others of environmental concern, etc.
http://www.undispatch.com/women-world-live-stream%0A
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-18chinas-five-most-powerful-women/%3Fcid%3Dtopic%3Amainpromo3%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.comnewsmaker%2Fwomen-in-the-world%2F%0A
http:/content.usatoday.com/communities/kindness/post/2010/03%2Ftina-brown-women-in-the-world-summit-promotes-economic-empowerment-of-women-worldwide%2F1%0A%0A%0A%Pr
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