Clinton Speaks To Women Leaders At Bryn Mawr College
By Cherri Gregg
BRYN MAWR, Pa. (CBS) — Former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to women leaders from roughly three dozen war-torn countries at a women's leadership event at Bryn Mawr College.
Hillary Clinton arrived at the Thomas Great Hall to a standing ovation and cheers. A leader admired for repeatedly breaking the glass ceiling, she implored the delegate attendees at the two-week Women in Public Service Project Institute to find evidence to support proposed solutions and team up with allies to help make change. She says the ultimate goal is to get women to fill half of all public service jobs worldwide by 2050.
"We need more leaders to stand against corruption....We need more leaders who say no to business as usual. We need more leaders who get up every single day and say 'what can I do this day to help the largest number of people live up to their God-given potential,'" said Clinton.
"I see myself in that speech, I also see a lot of hope," says Agnes Igye, a delegate from Uganda who works in that country's Ministry of Internal Affairs. She says Ugandan women are the backbone of the community despite the many atrocities and abuses of war like rape and trafficking.
"You'll find a woman who has been raped through the war, but she will struggle and she will still feed her family," says Igye. "She will still grow those crops and still build the community. The women climb up and build the huts. We don't wait for men to do it. We have men as allies, but we do it ourselves."
Clinton founded the Women in Public Service Project in 2011 as partnership between the U.S. Department of State and several leading women's colleges, including Barnard, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley.
