Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that more women globally need to move from the “informal economy” in which their contributions are not recognized or paid, to the formal economy.
Speaking at Georgetown University, Clinton said significant gender gaps in economic participation remain worldwide but that if more women were allowed to work, the gross domestic product in their countries would grow.
“If you present this kind of data on what this would mean for the gross domestic product of nations, heads start nodding even among skeptical leaders in public and private sectors, “ she said.
Clinton created the International Council on Women’s Business Leadership in 2011 while serving as secretary of state.
“We in this council are looking at from most basic barriers that enable girls to go onto higher education away from homes, all the way to how we get more women on corporate boards and executive positions,” she told the Georgetown crowd.
She recalled a conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York this year, in which he said that “one of the best things he could do is to get more educated, innovative women into the workforce.”
“He is opening the door to work family balance,” she said.
Despite Clinton’s praise for Abe’s efforts to promote “womeneconomics,” the recent departure of two female Japanese cabinet ministers amid allegations of financial impropriety undermined his initiative.
Clinton also applauded India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ground-up efforts to improve sanitation and make female bathrooms more widely available.
She said that women in India would contribute $1.7 trillion to the economy if they participated in the labor force at the same levels as men.
“Why would we ignore any solution that would work?” she asked.
Clinton also addressed the U.S. gender gap, noting that 4 in 10 breadwinners now are women, and that “American women still make less than men for doing the same job.”
“I had a conversation with a nurse while we were waiting for my granddaughter, Charlotte, to make her entrance,” she said. “She thanked me for fighting for paid leave.”
In expressing her concern for the kind of world Charlotte would inherit as an adult, Clinton emphasized that equal opportunities in the workforce were not only economically smart, but inalienable.
“We should never shy away from saying that women’s rights are human rights,” she said. “This is finally on the global agenda; we’ve come a long way since conversations in Africa I had during the (late) 1900s when we just didn’t register there was a problem.”
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