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FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON REMARKS FOR THE
UNITED NATIONS FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN

  BEIJING, CHINA

  SEPTEMBER 5, 1995

 Mrs. Mongella, distinguished delegates and guests:

        I would like to thank the Secretary General of the
United Nations for inviting me to be part of the 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
their communities, 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 in 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
concerns. And time and again, our talk turns to our
children and our families.

         However different we may be, 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 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 participate fully in the political life of their
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, nurses, teachers,
lawyers, 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 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, where
government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are
working on ways 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 will flourish.

         That is why every women, every man, every child,
every family, and every nation on our planet has 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 have 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 Jojakarta, 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 creative, 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 build a
new democracy.

         I have met with the leading women of the Western
Hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy
and better health care for the children of their countries.

         I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are
taking out small loans to buy milk cows, rickshaws, thread
and other materials to create a livelihood for themselves
and their families.

         I have met 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. Women are 70 percent of the world's poor, and
two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write.

         Women 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 ballot box and the bank lending office. 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 up for 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 have raised their families
and now find that their skills and life experiences are not
valued in the workplace. . . for women who are working all
night as nurses, hotel clerks, and fast food chefs so that
they can be at home during the day with their kids . . .
and for women everywhere who simply don't have time to do
everything they are called upon to do each 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 that there is no formula for
how women should lead their lives. That is why we must
respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and
her family. Every women deserves the chance to realize her
God-given potential.

         We also 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 international community has long acknowledged
-- and recently affirmed 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 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 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, on the eve of a new millennium, it
is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here
in Beijing, and 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.

         The voices of this conference and of the women at
Huairou must be heard loud and clear:

* 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.

* 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.

* 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, it is that human rights are women's rights . . . .
And women's rights are human rights.

* Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to
speak freely. And the right to be heard.

          Women must enjoy the right 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
non-governmental 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 on the part of many courageous women and men.

         It was one of America's most divisive
philosophical wars. But it was also a bloodless war.
Suffrage was achieved without a shot fired. 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 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 other, deeply-rooted
problems that continue to diminish the potential of half
the world's population.

         Now it is 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, families
rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children
and care for their relatives.

         As long as discrimination and inequities remain so
commonplace around the world -- as long as girls and women
are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid,
not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their
homes -- the potential of the human family to create a
peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

         Let this conference be our -- and the world's --
call to action.

         And let us heed the call so that we can create a
world in which every women 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.

         Thank you very much.

         God's blessings on you, your work and all who will
benefit from it.