Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

Preface
I am pleased to present this overview on U.S. contributions to
advancing the status of women worldwide. It is both an appropriate
commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action and a clear demonstration of our continuing
support for, and progress toward, their overall objectives. We look forward
to further strides in the years ahead.
Achieving global respect for
women is a U.S. foreign policy
imperative.
President Bush emphasized
in his first State of the
Union Address, and on
numerous occasions since, that
“respect for women” is one of
the “non-negotiable demands of human dignity.”
In the international arena, the United States has
aided efforts that have garnered substantial progress
for women around the world. Some of this progress is
historic. In Afghanistan, for example, millions of
Afghan women cast their ballots in their country’s
first-ever free presidential election in October 2004.
The United States provided political and advocacy
training for Afghan women and funds to support voter
registration and the election process. One Afghan
widow casting her ballot said: “When you see women
here lined up to vote, this is something profound. I
never dreamed that this day would come.”
More broadly, the United States provides hundreds
of millions of dollars each year for concrete
projects benefiting women everywhere: education and
literacy training; assistance to public-private partnerships
for business development; microcredit loans for
aspiring women entrepreneurs; maternal and child
health care programs; HIV/AIDS prevention and
treatment centers; anti-trafficking projects; leadership,
political, and advocacy training; and more. And there
is a human reality behind each of these efforts: millions
of individual women who are now able, with our support,
to read and write; keep their families healthy;
start new businesses; vote in free elections; and even
serve their countries as government ministers, judges,
journalists, and in many other ways—often for the
very first time in their lives.
At home, the American people support the further
advancement of women in social, political, and
economic life, as documented in the pages that follow.
We also realize that more can and must be done to
enhance women’s equality of opportunity. That is why,
as this publication also makes clear, the United States
maintains a wide array of programs toward this end.
Our work will not be complete until full participation
is possible for every woman—in the United
States and elsewhere.
PA ULA J. DOBRIANSKY
Under Secretary for Global Affairs
U.S. Department of State
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