Late in an article written for McClatchy about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tour of Asia, Tim Johnson mentions
In Japan, the first stop on her trip, Clinton had tea with an old acquaintance, Empress Michiko, who almost never meets diplomats.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/117/story/62601.htmlBorn Shoda Michiko, the current Empress was the first commoner to marry into the Japanese foreign family. She broke with tradition and breast fed her own children, raised them, fixing their box lunches herself, which roused the scorn of her in-laws, who bullied her so badly that she lost her voice for months in the 1960s. By American standards, her job is a stultifying one, since she must present herself as a model of virtue, modesty and patience at all times—the ideal Japanese wife—even though she was educated at Harvard and Oxford. The highlight of her year is presiding over Japan’s annual silkworm festival. She gets to feed to bugs---
I guess this proves that even Empresses need some one to raise public awareness of their plight.
On Saturday Feb. 21, the New York Times gently criticized Secretary of State Clinton for emphasizing the environment---specifically greenhouse gas emissions---rather then getting all in-your-face with China about Tibet.
Because everyone knows that the only human rights violations that China commits of any importance are those that occur in Tibet.Human rights groups have criticized Mrs. Clinton for soft-pedaling Tibet and other issues during her first visit as secretary of state. She said she did not want these disputes to interfere with critical challenges like climate change, the global economic crisis and security concerns.
It was a stark contrast to 1995, when Mrs. Clinton, then first lady, gave a speech in Beijing at a United Nations conference, in which she catalogued abuses against women and concluded by saying that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/world/asia/22diplo.html?hpFunny how every rights group on earth---and I mean
every rights group on earth. That includes racial and religious minorities and gays, too---sometimes forgets that discrimination begins at our own front door. On Sunday, Feb. 22, the Secretary of State held a meeting which did not get a lot of press coverage. I did not see an article about it in the New York Times.
Earlier in the day, Clinton attended a church service, then hosted two dozen women lawyers, domestic abuse experts, entrepreneurs and activists, many of whom she had met on previous trips to China.
"I have such vivid memories of our times together in the past," Clinton enthused, before launching into questions about the status of women's rights issues in the country. The meeting was held at the U.S. Embassy to avoid sensitivities of the Chinese government.
"In no society, certainly including my own, are women treated equally yet," she added.
Tim Johnson from McClatchy
But…but…China is the
bad guy. They put plastic in our milk and undercut our labor prices and oppress Tibet and own our national debt. She isn’t supposed to talk about how we are just like them when it comes to the exploitation of half their citizens. Does not she know that we are in the middle of a world economic crisis? Women’s issues are a luxury that will have to wait.
http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/In the United States
Poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women, particularly if they are black or Hispanic. In 2007, 28.3 percent of households headed by single women were poor, while 13.6 percent of households headed by single men and 4.9 percent of married-couple households lived in poverty.
Worldwide
http://poverty.suite101.com/article.cfm/feminization_of_poverty70 per cent of the world's poor are women. The majority of the 1.5 billion people living on $1 a day or less are women.The gap between men and women caught in the cycle of poverty has continued to widen in recent years. This alarming trend is referred to as ‘the feminization of poverty’.
Snip
Women need to be able to actively participate in economic and political life. Empowering women is a critical factor in stopping the cycle of poverty.
As I have discussed in several recent journals, poverty and wealth disparity are some of the major motivators and risk factors for war.
“Poverty dehumanizes….it destroys emotional life, one’s relationships with others; it continually places obstacles in the way of the essential vocation of human beings to develop themselves and expand their abilities beyond the survival instinct, it leads them to envy, hatred, violence against those responsible for their misery…”
Leonardo Boff Saint Francis
We will not reduce war and violence on earth unless we reduce the incidence of poverty. And poverty wears the face of a child and a mother.
Clinton made clear then that advancing women's rights would be a hallmark of her job.
"I view this not only as a moral issue, but as a security issue," she said.
Tim Johnson McClatchy
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