Through all of the year 2008, I did not feel all too positive emotions when the name of Hillary Clinton came up. After all, there was that fierce competiton of hers for the Democratic Party nomination for POTUS against some Mr. Barack Obama, whom I happened to strongly support with heart and mind.
Even when said Mr. Obama, by the time President Obama, offered her the office of Secretary of State, and she agreed, my feelings were mixed (owing to the presumed future role of her husband).
But finally, I have come to feel really excited about SoS Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I am under the impression that Hillary Clinton will make a significant contribution to make this world a better and safer place.
It started recently with a remark during a Senate testimony, where she called Afghanistan a "narco state" (nice diary about it here). Well, this is precisely the kind of inconvenient but important truth I would like to hear much more frequently from our representatives and government officials.
You cannot change reality for better until you accept existing reality as your starting point.
My hope in Hillary Clinton's future contribution to a better world, however, is centered on a very particular issue.
Women's rights.
It was Hillary Clinton's finest moment to date to deliver her speech at the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session on 5 September 1995 in Beijing, China. The line most quoted was:
It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.
These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence.
Hillary Clinton is right about that, and it is an important progressive issue.
But there is much more to it.
In our global society, progress has for the last two decades encountered its major opposition not in power politics or in a lack of opportunities, but in a lack of collective and individual ability to grasp opportunity out of reasons of traditional cultural bigotry.
And women's equality is at the core of the problem.
Any society that out traditional cultural bigotry does hinder the female half of its population to fully and equally take part in public life and working life will not be able to reach open and enlightened discourse. It will not be able to reach satisfying levels of economic development and overcome poverty. Rather, its domestic discourse with respect to the outside world will descend on a downward spiral of hurt self-esteem and nourish a desire to "fight" those who fare better.
Just to once again mention the basics: In many regions, most prevalent in Africa and in the Arab and Arab-influenced world, schooling of girls to read and write is still negligible, both in absolute terms and relative to the schooling of boys, out of their traditional role focused solely on childbearing and housekeeping. And in many regions, most prevalent in the Arab and Arab-influenced world, women who wish to choose the life they live still risk punishment by death out of a patriarchalic-narcissistic culture built around an archaic idea of male "honor".
There are so many great things I expect from the Obama administration. Effectively working against traditional bigotry, in particular misogyny, as THE key obstacle for a better world has become one of them.
And Hillary Rodham Clinton is the best possible spearhead for that endeavour.
What I personally am looking forward to most in this respect is listening to hear her speak out against traditional Arab misogyny in the capitals of the Middle East and with the Arab media. In my eyes, there is no single more efficient way to make the world a better place in one hour. (And then somewhen on the horizon comes the wonderful dream of HRC mentioning homophobia in Ar Riyad ...)