A View from Abroad: What a Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Women

Asquith, C. (2016). A View from Abroad: What a Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Women. Solutions 7(1): 17–19. thesolutionsjournal.com/2016/1/a-view-from-abroad

Perspectives A View from Abroad: What a Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Women by Christina Asquith

UN Women / J Carrier

Hillary Clinton speaks at the UN Women event “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” in New York City in March 2015.

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ollowing the Benghazi hearings, and more recently with the terrorist attacks in Paris, the foreign policy of presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has come under scrutiny. However, few ask her about the one issue that most defined her legacy as US Secretary of State: her fight for women’s rights abroad, and her belief that “the subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world and the national security of our country.” While some see women’s empowerment as a soft or secondary issue in foreign policy, Clinton clearly doesn’t: she’s been calling attention to it since her famous Beijing UN speech in 1995, and getting more women into power

was a driving goal during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State.1 However, despite her achievements, many international women’s rights advocates still refuse to embrace her—accusing her hawkish position on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere as hurting women more than helping them. Are they overlooking a chance to make the planet’s most powerful person a self-declared feminist, or are they right? A new book, The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy takes a sharp lens to Clinton’s foreign policy impact on women. Authors Valerie Hudson of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and journalist

Patricia Leidl trace the history of the international women’s movement, assessing Clinton’s commitment. First, they consider whether her premise is rhetorical or real: does the status of women and girls really matter to national security? A growing body of research conclusively says yes, and Hudson and Leidl make their case.2 For example, one study of all armed conflicts between 1954 and 1994 found that the lower the percentage of women in power, the higher the rate of violence.3 Several other studies show that governments with stronger laws for women were much less likely to use force first and were much less violent once in a conflict.4

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