Living History by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

SILENCE IS NOT SPOKEN HERE

On a cold afternoon late in March 1995, I took my first extended trip overseas without the President. Forty-one passengers filled a vintage government jet and took off from Andrews Air Force Base for a twelve-day official visit to five countries in South Asia.

My companions included White House staff, State Department aides, members of the media, Secret Service agents, Jan Piercy, my friend from Wellesley and U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank, and best of all, Chelsea. The trip happily coincided with her spring break from school. She had just turned fifteen and was blossoming into a poised, thoughtful young woman. I wanted to share some of the last adventures of her childhood, and I wanted to watch her react to the extraordinary world we were about to enter, to see it through her eyes as well as my own.

After a seventeen-hour flight, we landed in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the late evening in a pounding rainstorm. The State Department had asked me to visit the subcontinent to highlight the administration’s commitment to the region, because neither the President nor the Vice President could make a trip soon. My visit was meant to demonstrate that this strategic and volatile part of the world was important to the United States and to assure leaders throughout South Asia that Bill supported their efforts to strengthen democracy, expand free markets and promote tolerance and human rights, including the rights of women. My physical presence in the region was considered a sign of concern and commitment.

Although we had only a short time in each country, I wanted to meet with as many women as possible to stress the correlation between women’s progress and a country’s social and economic status. Development issues had interested me since my years of working with Bill on behalf of poor, rural communities in Arkansas, but this was my first serious exposure to the developing world. I had gotten some preparation earlier in March when I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, to represent the United States at the United Nations World Summit for Social Development. That conference underscored my conviction that individuals and communities around the world are already more connected and interdependent than at any time in human history, and that Americans will be affected by the poverty, disease and development of people halfway around the globe.

The Chinese have an ancient saying, that women hold up half the sky, but in most of the world, it’s really more than half. Women handle a large share of the responsibility for the welfare of their families. Yet their work often goes unrecognized and unrewarded inside the family or by the formal economy. These inequities are starkly visible in South Asia, where more than half a billion people live in grinding poverty―the majority of them women and children. Poor women and girls are oppressed and discriminated against, denied education and medical care and victimized by culturally sanctioned violence.

Law enforcement often turns a blind eye to the crimes of wife

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