International Women's Forum Cornerstone Conference

Visiting the International Women’s Forum in Buenos Aires was both uplifting and disturbing. We met with and heard panels with speakers in high positions in government or political parties in Paraguay, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines and Morocco.

The uplifting parts:

• All these women idealistically pursue notorious goals of improving education, healthcare and reducing corruption and crime.
• They all saw themselves as leading differently ─ many openly refer to their role as mothers guiding much of what they see as priorities and contributing to their styles of consensus building and developing others.

The disturbing parts:

• These women are the “first” in these roles and they face strong opposition, heightened media scrutiny and significant prejudices.
• Their challenges are echoes of what we see women, including Hillary Clinton, face in the United States, except their challenges are of a magnitude of 5-6 times ours.
• The poverty and deep religious power bases that restrict reproductive rights of women and child care issues are daunting.

I walked away inspired by these women and a little ashamed of the complaining we as American women do. In Morocco until 2004, all women were forced to marry whom their parents chose and were betrothed at 8 or 9 years old ─ and now in 2008, they have a woman mayor. So progress is being made.

At the heart of many of these efforts is enabling women to be entrepreneurs. Giving them the means to make their own choices and manage their lives. When women use 89¢ of every dollar for household expenses, childcare and healthcare, while a man only spends 60¢ of every dollar for these things, one can easily see why investing in women will surely make this world better at a much faster pace.