We've already talked a bit about HRC's global master plan and the resistance to her efforts, but Times Correspondent Mark Landler really asks some powerhouse questions here really digging into the heart of the obstacles facing women. Most prominent in the discussions are the economic power of women and the links between gender oppression and terrorism.

Landler poses a query that is really asked in the realm of women's rights. When so much discussion focuses around awareness and not solutions, it was really refreshing to see this question appear:

Q: Do you have a point of view about what should come first: Do you empower women economically and then hope that they seize a political role for themselves? Or do you seek to give them more legal and political standing and hope that they can win a place in the economic sphere?

Clinton: That's a great question, because I think the historical record would show both routes have worked. Women were not particularly economically empowered when we finally included the right of women to vote in our Constitution. So women's rights were expanded in 1920, and that opened up a lot of doors to women to see themselves in different roles, including economic roles, outside the home.

India's been a democracy for 60 years, and remarkably extended the vote to everyone, every caste, to both men and women equally. So women have been given the right to vote, but without economic empowerment, they didn't have the influence that their votes should have brought, which is why the government of India has made such a big point of extending economic and political opportunity equally to women.

And when we visited SEWA, the Self-Employed Women's Association [in India], those women had the vote before they were born, but being economically empowered, being able to stand up for themselves inside their families, on the streets of their villages, is giving them a sense of autonomy and authority that just their vote couldn't have.

A discussion of economics (alongside discussions of literacy, education, and access) is crucial in fighting gender discrimination. As we discussed before, lacking access to capital can have dire consequences for women. It leads to them seeking out men for financial stability and being at the whim and mercy of that man. It also a way for women to be controlled, even in more developed nations. The power to earn and retain one's own money, to purchase and own property, and to work should be fundamental rights for every citizen. Landler presses even further with one solution that has gained a lot of popularity: microlending.

Q: In your travels as secretary of state, you've focused heavily on the role of microlending. Is there a reason in these early days that you've tended to emphasize the economic over the political?

Clinton: [...] I am also struck by every international public-opinion poll I've ever seen, that the No. 1 thing most men and women want is a good job with a good income. It is at the core of the human aspiration to be able to support oneself, to give one's children a better future. Microenterprise is uniquely designed to empower women because - through the trial and error of its development, going back to Muhammad Yunus's invention of it in Bangladesh - women are much greater at investing in future goods than the men who have participated in microcredit have turned out to be. And they are also very reliable in paying back, because they are so eager to have that extra help and recognition that microcredit provides.

So, I don't make a distinction between economic empowerment and political, social empowerment; I think it's fair to say both need to go hand in hand.

Landler also brings up an interesting link between terrorism and gender-based oppression:

Q: There are counterterrorism experts who have made the observation that countries that nurture terrorist groups tend to be the same societies that marginalize women. Do you see a link between your campaign on women's issues and our national security?

Clinton: I think it's an absolute link. Part of the reason I have pursued it as secretary of state is because I see it in our national security interest. If you look at where we are fighting terrorism, there is a connection to groups that are making a stand against modernity, and that is most evident in their treatment of women.

What does preventing little girls from going to school in Afghanistan by throwing acid on them have to do with waging a struggle against oppression externally? It's a projection of the insecurity and the disorientation that a lot of these terrorists and their sympathizers feel about a fast-changing world, where they turn on television sets and see programs with women behaving in ways they can't even imagine. The idea that young women in their own societies would pursue an independent future is deeply threatening to their cultural values.

But, there's an interesting part in Landler's line of questioning where HRC falters a bit. It is a question often asked by women's rights activists and others who are wary of the cause of gender equality being co-opted (and then later discarded) to score political points. If we are aggressively pursing and denouncing the way some nations treat women, why do we give a pass to others? Landler asks:

Q: Many of the countries where the abuses against women are most prevalent are also countries that have a vital strategic importance to the United States: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India. How can you aggressively advocate for women without jeopardizing those strategic relationships?

Clinton: Well, in a number of these strategic relationships, there's a commitment to advancing the roles and rights of women. In India, the changes that have been made are remarkable. There are still tens of millions of very poor women, but women have assumed more and more responsibility; they are seen in public positions and increasingly economic ones, where their stature is accepted by society.

When I meet with the Chinese leadership, as I just did in the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, they have women who are part of their leadership team, and women who are assuming greater and greater economic and political roles.
[...]

In other societies where we have strategic security interests, it's a challenge to move the agenda forward in a way that includes women's issues. When we did our strategic review on Afghanistan, we said very clearly, We can't be all things to all people in Afghanistan. We have to focus on a few critical concerns. But one of them was the role of women, and women's participation in society.

She doesn't even touch Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Now, I can understand that global politics is a volatile game, and it may be easier and more efficient to focus on criticizing enemies than to alienate allies. But, if women's rights around the globe are that much of a cornerstone to our global strategy, wouldn't it be problematic to keep working with countries that participate in gender based oppression?

Either way, the interview (conducted in just 35 minutes) makes for insightful reading and adds a great deal of insight into trends to watch for while Hillary Clinton continues in her role as Secretary of State.

(Aside: The interview actually brings up far more issues than I can discuss in one blog post. Bookmark this page for future reference - I've asked some of my friends who work in counterterrorism, homeland security, and international politics to weigh in with their thoughts and opinions later in the week. Stay tuned.)

A New Gender Agenda [NY Times Magazine]

Earlier: Hillary Clinton, Women's Rights, & Colluding With Global Misogyny

Tanglad writes:

A whopping 90 to 99 percent of these loans are paid back with interest, another shining indicator of microcredit’s success. But there is an ugly side to ensuring repayment, where poor women are made to police one another and punish defaulters with collective acts of aggression… Microcredit beneficiaries are grouped into cohorts of five to fifteen members. They are given clear instructions: “You are all responsible for the loan and have to make sure that no one defaults.” This lays the foundation of a very effective surveillance system, wherein poor women monitor other poor women. And the poorest women, the ones who need loans the most, are evicted from the group to minimize the risk of default.

Apparently, women involved in microlending go to great lengths to repay their loans, cutting back on family expenses, like food, and children's school items. Still, writes Sarah Bosely in the Guardian, "Women could change the face of Africa." Bosely reports from Uganda, where women hold families together, despite being victims of sexual extortion and violence. She notes that the UN finds that 60% of the billion poorest people on the planet are women; 70% of the 130 million children who are not in school are girls. Wouldn't it make sense that any assistance would be a good thing?

Not according to Tanglad, who argues:

The supposed success of “compassionate capitalism” strategies obscures the enormous social costs behind statistics such as amazing loan repayment rates. Social costs that are ultimately borne by women who are already marginalized by their socioeconomic and indigenous status.

Microcredit: “A Political Economy Of Shame” [Racialicious]
Hope Rests With Africa's Women [Guardian]
Related: Do Hopes For Development In Africa Really Only Lie With Women?

Earlier: Money Doesn't Make The World Go Around, But It Helps

LATOYA: Ok, let's rock. But first I want to add something to the discussion we were having yesterday. I went back to my site to decompress the thoughts on what should and should not be shown in terms of coverage of tragic events.

MEGAN: Sure.

LATOYA: And after reading through the points made by my readers, the answer was pretty clear: We want more truth in coverage. Violence can be a part of that truth, but most of us are concerned that violent coverage is more for ratings and shock value. Violence happens, and it should be reported on. But asking for more bodies and gore won't necessarily lead us to truth, you know?

MEGAN: And, on the other hand, the American media sanitizes the violence for fear of turning viewers off, and for fear of getting in trouble with the FCC.

LATOYA: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. Like I said before, it depends on who the victims are. That largely dictates what kind of coverage is provided. Your reference to porn yesterday was apt, because I forgot this phenomenon has already been termed disaster pornography.

MEGAN: I disagree that there's any honesty in our coverage, period. I know that, in other countries, there was more coverage of people hurling themselves from the towers on 9/11. I know that, in other countries, there is more honest carnage shown. Our news generally shows people crying as a stand-in for the results of violence. No, disaster porn is different. Disaster porn is fetishizing the violence. There's a difference between showing it and making it beautiful or erotic.

LATOYA: You don't think we fetishize the violence?

MEGAN: I think we fetishize fake violence, and then don't show real violence, so we end up fetishizing violence we never really see.

LATOYA: Part of that fetish led to the comparisons of the war surges with video games. And ultimately, I wonder if violence can be applied effectively at this point because again, the treatment depends on the victims. Nameless bodies piling up in Iraq? Sure, we could show them the citizens, but because Iraqis have been so othered (insert Katt Williams' joke about insurgents here) would it have an impact? And would it have the same impact if we showed the casualties in Iraq, but continued to hide the deaths of our own?

MEGAN: I think it did in Vietnam. And I think we should show both.

LATOYA: But times have changed since Vietnam.

MEGAN: I think humans should be fully aware of what we can do and are doing to one another.

LATOYA: We are literally inundated with data and images of suffering.

MEGAN: And they still carry power over people. Even those images of Vietnam still do.

LATOYA: We are in a different time, war photography has changed, how we perceive war and death has changed and I think we need to look toward a different version of truth. If those images still held the power you say, why are we still engaged in these wars? Why do people not commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima or listen to the survivors of that bombing, some of whom are still living and speaking out?

MEGAN: I mean, I don't want to gross anyone out in the morning, but go look at the pictures of the Bhutto assassination aftermath I picked out when I worked at Wonkette. Tell me that it looks like what you see on TV. Tell me that it looks like what you saw on the news then, or even this weekend. Tell me is isn't horrifying and sickening and much more real. And then think that this is what you didn't actually see in Mumbai, but that it was there too. No amount of blood on a floor can convey that carnage, or that horror.

LATOYA: But is it really, Megan?

MEGAN: And, so, no. It's not at all the same as listening to a survivor, or watching someone cry — even a kid.

LATOYA: We remember that — we're knee deep in news everyday. But do people?

MEGAN: Do people look? They're hardly ever given a chance to.

LATOYA: It's kind of like dealing with the images of starving kids in other nations. Particularly in Africa (and I hate just using a continent as a blanket term.) For a while, it tugged on people's heartstrings.

MEGAN: We're still engaged because people have short memories.

LATOYA: But then, strangely, people just started to accept this is how things are. Africa is just fucked up, no rhyme, no reason to it, and it will never get better.

MEGAN: We aren't engaged because people have short memories. Every place is fucked up. And the solutions are not easy solutions. People gave money, and it didn't get better.

LATOYA: And that mindset is part of the reason why it is hard to motivate people to take action and to protest. If you go for shock (which is what I feel the media is doing) you have to continually shock on a larger and larger scale to take action. Truth is more potent than that. It is less jarring than that initial shock to the system, but longer lasting.

MEGAN: See, I don't think the media is going for shock, because they have to put it on the airwaves. The story I linked to yesterday, that I wrote — they took one of the photos in the set I just linked to, cropped out much of the carnage and then blurred the rest so that you couldn't see. They are giving you a piece of the truth, but not the whole truth. Period. And so the truth remains shrouded. I don't think the truth of Mumbai is a crying child — let alone a crying white child. But that's the truth that people are willing to look at.

LATOYA: I'll cosign, but I don't think the truth is blood on the floor either.

MEGAN: Or, rather, people here. I think the truth is the body on the floor. It's the loss of life. It's the lack of energy in a face.

LATOYA: Anyway, on that note, let's talk about terrorism. As it was dominating the Washington Post coverage this morning. So apparently, a WMD attack is imminent.

MEGAN: Well, that doesn't surprise me. If we think all that planning that went into Mumbai was the end of it, then we're fooling ourselves.

LATOYA:

The report, ordered by Congress last year, concludes that terrorists are more likely to obtain materials for a biological attack than to buy or steal nuclear weapons. But it says the nuclear threat is growing rapidly, in part because of the increasing global supply of nuclear material and technology.

"Without greater urgency and decisive action by the world community, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013," says the draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. The Post reported excerpts from an earlier draft in Sunday's editions.

I am watching to see how the India/Pakistan thing shakes out. India is pushing hard to get Pakistan to hand over people they think were involved in the attacks.

MEGAN: Of course they are. I believe we were keen on then handing over people that were involved in 9/11 and Daniel Pearl's murder once upon a time. I wish them luck with that. I'm more concerned that we're talking about nuclear and biological weapons being used in a terror attack and Homeland Security is years behind on things designed to detect them.

LATOYA: Okay, so I know I've been going on all kinds of tangents this morning (and we've only been talking 15 mins) but it's a big picture kind of day for me. Not only is Homeland Security behind on detection, but our infrastructures won't support an attack.

MEGAN: Or, rather, won't support a decent response to an attack.

LATOYA: Our local governments are stretched to the max and cutting vital services everyday - do you think we're in a position to respond to a major biological attack? With our current health care system?

MEGAN: Hell, it's more than 7 years after 9/11 and emergency responders still can't communicate with one another in many cases. Hospitals are closing.

LATOYA: Right. Why isn't this a part of counterterrorism measures? Our infrastructures need to be stable and funded so if - heaven forbid - something does happen, we can actually minimize the damage.

MEGAN: It is, actually. It's just that getting the bandwidth required for communications back from the phone companies we sold it to was a complete clusterfuck in Washington for years.

LATOYA: head desk

MEGAN: The company that owned it — Nextel — didn't want to give it back without major concessions and new bandwidth. There was lobbying, and gobs of money to be had.

LATOYA: I thought corporations had human rights under the law. Can't we force them to be good citizens?

MEGAN: The government chased its tail (and the bandwidth) for most of the last 7 years. That's why Homeland Security is so far behind on it. That, and no one there has any idea what the fuck they are doing. Nope. Welcome to Washington.

LATOYA: Maybe I should buy one of those Corporate America flags from Adbusters after all...

MEGAN: Back to biological weapons,

Meanwhile, although recent intelligence assessments have warned that a biological attack poses the greatest terror threat, signature defense measures - including the multibillion-dollar Project Bioshield to stockpile antidotes - have made only limited strides, according to Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security.

"There has been a modest amount of work done in that venue, candidly," Ridge said in a recent interview. He said Americans "have spent billions on the development of a bio-defense stockpile but they don't have much to show for it."

LATOYA: More minor notes getting lost in the terrorism frenzy. The EU is concerned that we aren't providing enough aid to developing nations. I swear — what can we buy with a billion dollars? Obviously, not what we were expecting.

MEGAN: Yes, let's talk about that during a recession, when we're trying to provide aid to ourselves. Our own states are asking for aid money now.

LATOYA: Well, if you look at the reports:

The World Bank has said that developing countries are facing a 'perfect storm', with the convergence of slowing growth, a withdrawal of private capital, and higher interest rates on their debt.

The Bank says that growth in developing countries will fall by two percentage points to 4.5% next year, as the volume of global trade contracts for the first time since 1982.

But aid agencies have criticised the fact that neither the head of the World Bank or the IMF, or many other world leaders from rich countries, have come to the talks.

LATOYA: I recently spent a few weekends in the company of some rock star National Security experts —- most notably Lorelei Kelly, formerly of the White House Project — and they all had the same answer to this one. Where we invest the money is the problem.

MEGAN: I don't mean to be terribly flip about it, actually. Foreign aid, when done well, is important. But, yes, where we send it is at issue.

LATOYA: Instead of investing in people and infrastructure, we invest in governments and weapons.

MEGAN: More microfinance and less stock market development, please.

LATOYA: According to Lorelei, the security policy of the 21st century has to include helping countries to develop and educated populace. Umm... I'm on the fence about microfinance.

MEGAN: Oh, and let's eliminate the Mexico City Policy, while we're at it.

LATOYA: It has great benefits.

MEGAN: And, notably, it's cheap.

LATOYA: But...

MEGAN: And it also doesn't generally end up in the hands of dictators to build more palaces.

LATOYA: My girl Tanglad opened my eyes to the other side of microcredit.

In her study of Grameen Bank microcredit programs in rural Bangladesh,* Leila Karim finds that the focus on the 98 percent loan recovery rate hides how beneficiaries are co-opted into “a political economy of shame.”

Microcredit works by appropriating the only social capital poor women possess — their virtue and family honor. Among the Ifugao women in the northern Philippines,** microcredit beneficiaries are grouped into cohorts of five to fifteen members. They are given clear instructions: “You are all responsible for the loan and have to make sure that no one defaults.”

This lays the foundation of a very effective surveillance system, wherein poor women monitor other poor women. And the poorest women, the ones who need loans the most, are evicted from the group to minimize the risk of default.

Given the surprising lack of entrepreneurial or job skills training in microcredit schemes, it’s not unusual for a member to default on her loan. This is when things get even uglier, as the other women in the cohort are forced to extract payment.

In Bangladesh, for example, women march off together to publicly scold a member who falls behind on her loan payments. The cohort would also scold her husband in public. If she could not produce the money, the other women in her cohort would take anything that could be sold for loan payments — her cows and chicks, grain from her family’s pantry, uprooted trees and plants from her yard. Even her gold nose-ring, an important symbol of marital status for rural women.

When even these repossessions were not enough to repay the loan, the cohort could instigate the ultimate dishonor of ghar bhanga (literally, “house-breaking”), where the defaulting member’s house is sold off to pay for the microloan.

I think it's a good tool, but not a solution. Just like with capitalism, some people will flourish and thrive under microcredit, and some won't. Oh, some background — Tanglad writes from the Philippines, a major export zone, and ground zero for monitoring the effects of globalization.

MEGAN: That's true. But, like the protesters who argue that vast swaths of the developing world should not have to pay back their loans to lending institutions, I disagree that structuring a system without consequences for default is a good plan. Like, say, what we're seeing with Fannie and Freddie here.

LATOYA: This is also true. I'm not sure Tagland is arguing for that though — she's basically asking that some of the worker protections we enjoy are extended to the developing world, which would allow for more women to take traditional jobs. But, that would also make labor more expensive, which defeats the purpose of exporting. (She also blogs about labor activism and the people who vanish each year for asking for the rights we enjoy.)

MEGAN: I'm for labor protections, but the idea that we'll pay the same wages in the Philippines as here isn't going to function. There will always be labor cost differentials.

LATOYA: True — but do we have to pay the dirt cheapest wages at all times? I know you watched that Primark documentary.

MEGAN: That is, for better or for worse, how capitalism functions. Management buys labor for what laborers are willing to sell it for. It's the purpose of organized labor, to set an agreed-upon floor.

LATOYA: But our capitalism ain't capitalism. Laborers are willing to sell things for so low because they don't have many other options, and major players rig the market so that many countries are forced to import food and other vital necessities at above cost. I feel like a lot of our global problems can be solved by understanding the flow of money and labor. So many things stem from that: the artificial understanding of cost, the desperation that leads to terrorism, the food crisis.

MEGAN: Well, I think the importation of goods that could be locally produced cheaper is a remnant of colonialism, so thank Britain for that.

LATOYA: And just shrugging and saying "hey, that's the way things are" ignores how this system has hyper-evolved over the last fifty years.

MEGAN: But it's also a lack of free markets in those countries that would allow the market to function properly — which is to say, if it can be produced cheaper locally, in a functioning market, it would be.

LATOYA: False. Not if we prohibit them from doing so!

MEGAN: But there are still a lot of governments in the developing world that rely on command economic structures.

LATOYA: Hang on, let me pull out my old post standby...

MEGAN: We don't prohibit countries from producing goods. We prohibit them from exporting them to us by our tariff structure, or make it less economically viable by our farm subsidization programs. That isn't the same thing.

LATOYA: Actually, we do. We can put restraints on the money we provide unless the country meets the conditions we set. This happened in Malawi. We told them that in order to get funding from us, they could not farm their own food. Analysts decided it was cheaper for Malawi to import food and sell other goods and services. This led to a massive food shortage for a few years. The government finally decided to defy the recommendations (at great risk - because that could mean the end of the money stream) and subsidized its farmers the way we do. And that ended the food crisis for two consecutive years.

MEGAN: Now, that is an oversimplification of what went on, honestly.

LATOYA: They sent the emergency aid to other nations. Now, every African nation is not Malawi.

MEGAN: We didn't prohibit them from farming their own food. We refrained from giving them money to pay for a subsidy program.

LATOYA: Megs, if they rely on that money, isn't that a prohibition? Now, it's not like every single situation works out this way.

MEGAN: So we're supposed to fund every other country's farm subsidy program?

LATOYA: Global finance works in strange ways, and impacts different nations differently.

MEGAN: We shouldn't be funding our own.

LATOYA: We are funding our own — but, yes, we need to shift to helping nations become self-sufficient.

MEGAN: The point of subsidies is that it encourages inefficiencies. Subsidies don't encourage self-sufficiency.

LATOYA: In some nations. And in some nations, it prevents starvation. Yes, they can. If you check the food experts take on this, our insistence on an efficient market lead to this mess in the first place.

MEGAN: No, there are plenty of factors which led to the underlying problems that then necessitated the use of subsidies.

LATOYA: Like the droughts. But there is a reason the global south continues to reject a whole slew of policies that they see as ensuring their dependence on foreign aid and imported food.

MEGAN: Or the inefficient farming system that relied upon one, high-intensive food stuff.

LATOYA: What, like Mexico?

MEGAN: Maize is not an efficient crop. It's also debilitating on the soil and — notably — not native to Africa.

LATOYA: Who structured most of their eating habits around what could be bountifully grown and then found themselves fucked over following the import/export strategy prescribed?

MEGAN: In no small part because we subsidize heavily the growing of it here. Which we should stop, but we won't, because no one else will either. Subsidies either have to be multilateral disarmament, or they will never go away.

LATOYA:

When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of U.S. government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on U.S. imports in the first place?

From the Nation Manufacturing a Food Crisis. Damn, it's close to 10.

MEGAN: Notably, we also subsidize the production of ethanol — and impose heavy tariffs on cheap Brazilian ethanol to keep the prices high.

LATOYA: Resume tomorrow? I'll call Lorelei about national security and grab my copy of notes from the Global South.

MEGAN: Or maybe we'll have just convinced the government to forgo ethanol tariffs and farm subsidies by then.

LATOYA: Farm subsidies fuck us up — but that's my day job, so I'm biased. We'll talk more about that tomorrow too.

MEGAN: Farm subsidies fuck a lot of shit up, and it isn't my day job. But, yes, tomorrow!

Or maybe because she is not that intellectually curious and therefore lacks opinions that might lead her into something more meaningful!

Portman seemed to know enough about her subject — but no more than enough. I asked if she had the time to read books on economic development. Portman giggled and said, "I have time; I just don't want to."

That's not hard to fathom; Portman is a 26-year-old movie star. Still, she thinks of her discovery of poverty, and of this particular solution to it, as a pivot point in her life. She has stopped doing commercials. "I want to be comfortable and proud of everything I do," Portman says. She has designed a line of vegan shoes. She doesn't want to be controversial, but she does want to be taken seriously.

The Celebrity Solution [NYT Magazine]