Hillary Clinton on girls and women

Before Christmas Hillary Clinton was in Dublin where she spoke at DCU.

Two paragraphs from her speech quoted below.

As the mother of a daughter, and as someone who believes strongly in the right of every person, male and female, to have the opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential, it pains me so greatly when I travel to places around the world and am received almost as an exception to the rule, where the male leaders meet with me because I am the Secretary of State of the United States, overlooking the fact that I also happen to be a woman. We are on the right side of history in this struggle, but there will be many sacrifices and losses until we finally reach a point where daughters are valued as sons, where girls as educated as boys, where women are encouraged and permitted to make their contributions to their families, to their societies just as the men are.

We have also done a great deal of work to refocus our global health programmes so that we save the lives and improve the health of more women and girls. Health programmes, as you know, can be imbalanced, often in ways that are not obvious, but the result is women and girls don’t get the care they need when they need it, and many die unnecessarily. So our starting point must be this: Women’s lives matter. And promoting the human rights of women begins with saving the lives of women whenever we can.