Vital Voices Seek More Powerful Expression
Friday, November 13, 2009
By: Tom Watson

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton embarks on yet another diplomatic journey, women leaders representing the coalition she helped to ignite with her justly-famous speech on women's rights in Beijing 15 years ago gathered in a Florentine villa on a crisp Tuscan autumn morning recently to review the successes - and failures - of the last decade and a half in women's rights and economic empowerment worldwide.

Over the course of three days in Florence, a group of 50 NGO executives, political leaders, social entrepreneurs, corporate philanthropists, educators and media gurus convened by Vital Voices Global Partnership worked to develop a framework for economic, cultural and political change powered by women.

Secretary Clinton, who declared in Beijing in 1995 that "women's rights are human rights," now exercises a degree of power unrivaled by few of her gender - despite losing out on the American presidency last year in a campaign that featured its share of "iron my shirt" moments - was lost on no one at Villa La Pietra, the 57-acre spread overlooking Florence that was willed by Sir Harold Acton to New York University, which acted as the meeting's host. Just as September's Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York wove a tightly-crafted narrative around economic empowerment for women and human rights for women and girls, the Vital Voices gathering - bolding titled 'Breakthrough: Overcoming the Obstacles to Equality, Development and Peace' - worked within a framework that came into being with Clinton's speech in Beijing, and is now deeply supported by the State Department and the Obama Administration.

The 'Global Working Session to Commemorate the 15-Year Anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women' attracted its share of star power and governmental heft: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, U.S. ambassador at-large for global women's issues Melanne Verveer, veteran Democratic political strategist Bob Shrum, Italian Senate Vice-President Emma Bonino, philanthropist Sheila Johnson, Baroness Mary Goudie, and Daily Beast editor Tina Brown all took part in the intensive dawn-to-dark talks each day. As Verveer said in the opening session, "no country can get ahead if half its citizens are left behind."

Yet it's the struggle rather than the star power and elegant setting that remains my most vivid take-away from Florence; the stunning bravery and personal risk of several young women in their own countries and their visceral determination to change the lives of other women and girls that outshines even the massive frescoes of the Palazzo Vecchio, where Mayor (and rising Italian star) Matteo Renzi hosted a public panel discussion on women's rights, or the beauty of the Palazzo Spini Feroni, where the Ferragamo family hosted the closing night reception. No, the true stars - and the real motivators for the "breakthrough" thinking urged by Vital Voices CEO Alyse Nelson - were women like:

• Sadiqa Basiri Saleem, founder of the Oruj Learning Center in Afghanistan, who described her work in the Wardak province combating violence against women - violence that is likely to escalate if the United States leaves the country - and her efforts to increase educational opportunities for girls amidst a cultural landscape that makes it dangerous to teach women.
• Linda Swana, executive director of the Fundación Proyecto de Vida, a Guatemalan citizen movement that is enabling "bottom-up" citizen empowerment to improve what has traditionally been a closed and sometimes violent society. Linda vividly described the use of mobile technology by young women working with their political elders to uncover and publicize corruption in Guatemala.
• Kakenya Ntaiya, founder of the Kakenya Center for Excellence, a primary boarding school that serves vulnerable and underprivileged girls in Kenya and focuses on academic excellence, female empowerment, leadership, and community development, who became the first girl to leave her village and acquire a college education.

Ntaiya spoke passionately about her personal experiences with female genital mutilation and child marriage; moreover, she looked around the room and politely demanded action. In societies all over the world, girls face violence and repression, she said. "Their dreams are being shattered...This is not right and we shouldn't be talking about this ten years from now!"

Yet not all the talk was on the developing world; indeed, the organizers made an effort to change some of the language, including the use of "women's issues" itself. Empowering the bottom of the wealth and power pyramid, and creating a worldwide movement among young women, quickly emerged as goal of the gathering. I noted that in the U.S., for instance, the philanthropic and public/social service sectors are increasingly dominated by women. Why not work through a media and organizing strategy, using social media tools and face-to-face recruitment to make the empowerment and development goals of 1995 relevant and personal to emerging leaders - to "widen the base of stakeholders" as Vital Voices VP Kathleen Hendrix put it. "We need to systemetize what we do for youg women," said Carol Lancaster, dean of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. "We need to connect to activist women and engage, and teach, and sometimes deploy them."

Getting the story out is key, or as Tina Brown framed the question: "how do you crash the noise?" Part of the answer is effective story-telling and media training, asserted author and human rights activist Marylouise Oates. And part of the answer is language.  "We need to change the language," asserted Mary Goudie. "The 60s and 70s are over." Yet creating a real networked movement is also vital. "How do you make it a global language, so that it resonates with every single woman?" asked Zainab Salbi, Founder & CEO, Women for Women International.

There were no easy answers in Florence, despite the brainpower, commitment and connections so clearly on display. But the sessions did yield a consensus framework of three distinct "roadblocks" to success that future work by Vital Voices and others will attack:

• Lack of political will and accountability
• Lack of alternative economic structures
• Women's inferior status in society

As Senator Bonino regaled the gathering with stories of sexism in the meeting's host country - both humorous and horrifying - no one missed the irony that we were meeting in a developed country with the world's seventh-largest GDP, a country in which President Silvio Berlusconi feels free to remark that "The left has no taste, even when it comes to women" or to praise the beauty of Italian secretaries. The message was clear: there is work to do everywhere.

Real change, as any American enthused about last year's presidential election knows, doesn't often happen overnight. In the capital of the Italian Renaissance, in communion with the ghosts of Michelangelo and the Medicis, that lesson was neatly synthesized by Ellyn Toscano, NYU's director of La Pietra. Just as Florence and the Renaissance loosened the grip of the feudal lords and "focused on the worth of a human being," she said. "We need to focus on the worth of a girl."

About the Author

Tom Watson, author of CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World (Wiley, 2008) is Managing Partner of CauseWired Communications, a consulting firm advising nonprofits and causes. He can be reached at tom@causewired.com.