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 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 70t 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. Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air and clean airwaves. . 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.