Story highlights
Hillary Clinton joins forces with Michael Bloomberg on gender gap
Clinton Foundation report on women's progress slated for spring 2015
Clinton does not mention torture report at Monday's event
As she positions herself for a potential presidential run in 2016, Hillary Clinton sought to shine her spotlight Monday on one of her longtime goals: narrowing the gender gap around the world through the use of data.
The former Secretary of State spoke briefly Monday at an event with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to give a progress report on their joint 2012 initiative known as “data2x” – an effort intended to spark “a gender data revolution” – which is a partnership of the Clinton Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the United Nations Foundation.
Clinton noted that her quest to improve the data about the status of women around the world stemmed from her years as Secretary of State when she would try to broach those topics with other world leaders, who would “smile and nod” but often not take the topic seriously.
“You can’t understand what the problem is if you don’t have a good grasp of what the facts and figures are,” Clinton said. At the State Department, she learned, she said, that she could not rely solely on the moral argument that women’s rights should be considered human rights.
Clinton said she wanted to use to data to build a case strong enough “to convince the skeptics, based on hard data and clear-eyed analysis, that creating opportunities for women and girls across the world directly supports everyone’s security and prosperity, and therefore should be an enduring part of our diplomacy and development work.”
“After all, good decisions in government, in business, in life, are based on evidence rather than ideology or gut feelings or anecdotes,” Clinton said.
The former Secretary of State did not address other topics in the news Monday – namely last week’s release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of torture as part of its interrogation practices during the presidency of George W. Bush. (President Obama banned the use of those techniques after taking office in 2009).
Clinton has been closely monitoring progress on gender issues since her years as First Lady in the White House. It was at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 that Clinton famously declared that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” – setting the course for her advocacy as a U.S. Senator from New York and later as Secretary of State.
She and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, have targeted their efforts through a Clinton Foundation initiative known as the “No Ceilings” project.
At an event in February with her daughter Chelsea and philanthropist Melinda Gates, Clinton announced that the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were embarking on a global review to track women’s progress across the globe since the 1995 conference. That report will be released next spring.