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MOUNT MADONNA
SCHOOL
Interview with
Theresa Loar
Director, President's
Interagency Council on Women
MAY 16, 2000
Alison Alderdice: Can you tell us a little
bit about how you went from an advertising career
to your job with the President's Interagency Council
on Women, and what it was in your life that inspired
you to take such an active role in public service.
Theresa Loar: My husband and I were reading
an article in the New York Times Magazine section,
and there was a quiz you could take. It had some questions
from the Foreign Service Exam. It said if you can
pass this quiz, you could take the Foreign Service
Exam and you could pass it. We thought it sounded
like fun and we said let's do that. We were also at
the point where we were making a lot of money in the
private sector. I was working in advertising, my husband
was doing real estate law, but we felt we would like
to do something more service-oriented, something for
our country, and we thought it would be fun to live
and work overseas.
So we took the Foreign Service Exam, and passed
it, and went overseas, loved it; our children were
young, it was fabulous work, it was a great privilege
to serve as a diplomat overseas. It's just incredible
work, we learned so much. We learned a language. My
husband learned it a lot more easily than I did. We
learned it was great to live in another culture, to
represent your country, to have a whole range of issues
that you had to master, and to represent your country
on a whole range of issues, economic issues, political
issues, social issues. It's fascinating work.
Katie Fayram: Women today have many conflicting
responsibilities, the most obvious example being that
of motherhood and career. How did you balance the
roles, being a mother and a political activist, and
what kind of changes do you think we need to make
for it to be easier for women to be active in public
life?
Theresa Loar: I think that's an ongoing process,
how you balance the work you do in the home and the
work you do outside of the home. The period of work
I'm in right now is a calmer period, and for a long
time, as Alyse Nelson, my powerful, dynamic deputy
knows, we were going at a hundred and ten miles an
hour, and the balance was way off on the family side,
because we were traveling for two weeks at a time
in Northern Ireland, or Latin America, or in Russia,
you know, to get some of these initiatives off the
ground--
Or we were traveling with the First Lady and really
trying to get some of these brand new programs going.
They're going now, and they're going very strongly,
and they're having a great impact.
So we're really focusing now on telling the story
of what we've accomplished, and doing our best to
really allow some of the initiatives to take root,
and to develop, them to the next stage. Now my family-work
balance is much more in balance, and it's very nice
to have that. In that earlier stage when I was away
from home for a week or two at a time, I really counted
a great deal on my husband, and on my children, who
are teenagers now. It wasn't really comfortable when
I was away. It was, it was chaotic. I was very lucky
to have my husband to step in, and do it so gracefully,
so I am grateful for that. You do have to have a good,
strong relationship, and hang on when you go through
periods of time like that. You also have to allow
yourself the quieter times, and get comfortable when
there are times when it's not so busy, and remember
to say "Oh, this is good, this is a good time." This
means that it doesn't have to be go, go, go all the
time. Stop and enjoy and savor those times.
Laura Johnson: It seems that the progress
you want to make on issues affecting women worldwide
must inevitably come into conflict with established
cultural traditions. How can we discriminate between
those values that should be universally accepted,
and those that are strictly American? Do we know enough
about other cultures to make that kind of decision?
Theresa Loar: Well we listen to the women
on the ground. It's not that we go into another country
and say here's what we think should happen. We really
work in partnership with women leaders and activists
in other countries. Our goal is to help support the
women grassroots activists, the women in the national
assemblies, women in parliament, the women in any
government, and try to help them achieve their goals
for their own empowerment, and their own advancement;
whether they're trying to get better access to credit,
or better access to healthcare, or better education
possibilities, whether it's in India, or a Latin America.
It's not our definition of what they need; it's their
own ideas of what they need. That's what really works.
It's not that, necessarily, it's a Western ideal.
A lot of countries look at the United States, and
they say, "You have a very high divorce rate; we are
not interested in having half of our marriages end
in divorce. Your idea of a happy marriage and our
idea of a happy marriage are not necessarily the same
thing. So no thank you, we're not interested in that.
We're not interested in having handguns in our streets,
like you do. We're not interested in having our children
exposed to this kind of sexuality and violence on
TV and movies like you do. No thank you."
They may even feel sorry for me as a mother of teenagers
because my children are exposed to those kinds of
things, and they wonder how I'm able to handle that,
especially when I travel and I'm away from home. The
wonder how do I handle that? So they offer me some
advice on that.
These women have very concrete ideas of the things
they want to do for their children's education. They
would like some advice on how to get access to very
key ideas on communications, on how to get funds to
be able to run for office, on how to be able to get
better access to the Internet, On how to be able to
lobby their governments, on how to get tools to organize
themselves, to be able to get the attention of their
government on certain issues.
It's interesting that within different cultural
contexts, the culture is defined by who has access
to the media, and who controls the way the media looks
at things.
In other cases, the culture is defined by who has
the guns, who has the power, whether it's a military
power or the police power. A very good example is
Afghanistan. There was one culture in Afghanistan,
and then a different set of military power figures
came in, and they redefined the culture.
Is the culture defined by the all the people who
live there, or is it defined by the people who have
the guns? It's a real big question, and it's a question
that people are asking again and again.
Aaron Jacobs-Smith: Vital Voices is a catalyst
in women's issues all around the world. It seems that
your organization can be viewed as a somewhat revolutionary.
How do you get your message across without seeming
like a threat to the people and institution whose
support you need?
Theresa Loar: Well the great thing about Vital
Voices is we have not had hardly any resistance. We've
had Vital Voices meetings and conferences and roundtables,
all over the world. We work just down the road from
Capitol Hill (the Congress), which is not always in
sync with this administration on their agenda of women's
empowerment.
And believe it or not,(humorous) they're not always,
in total agreement with everything I have to say on
the advancement of women. And yet, on this agenda
of Vital Voices, Women and Democracy, we have not
heard one note of dissent or disagreement with them.
Part of it is how we have framed this issue. We've
used the word democracy. If you look at what we're
doing in Vital Voices, we're trying to build partnerships
to support women's advancement. We're also looking
at violence against women, we're looking at trafficking
in women and girls--
Now violence against women could be an issue where
people might disagree on how we look at it. I mean,
it's a tough issue. It's a very tough issue. There
may be people in some parts of the world, and even
here in the United States, and even in different parts
of this town, who may disagree on how we look at this.
But nobody has really tried to stop us or disagreed
with us on how we do this. I think it is partly because
of the kind of language we use. For example as we
framed the issue of Womens' rights, we used the word
democracy. Well is there anybody who's going to stand
up and say we're against democracy? I'm not saying
that we're packaging this, but I do think that we
have framed the issues, and built our program with
the idea that it's partnerships, it's government,
it's private sector, and its public sector, working
together.
It's working with not just the United States government,
but we are also in partnership with NGOs (non-government
organizations) on the ground, with other governments,
with other institutions all over the world. We've
recently done Vital Voices with the new government
coming into Northern Ireland, which was very exciting,
because it's not just an existing government but a
new government just coming in to power.
We've done Vital Voices with the Inter-American
Development Bank, which is the lending institution
to all of Latin America, which has great financial
power in the region. This is very exciting, because
that shows economic power and follow-through after
the initial conference. We've worked with a whole
slew of NGOs, and women's groups in the region.
We buy people into the concept, so that they're
part of it. It's not just us as a government separate.
We use language, like women's advancement, and it's
not threatening, and it's not criticizing.
A lot of people have told me that when you talk
about human rights, there's an implied criticism there,
that somebody's at fault, there's somebody doing something
wrong. But if you talk about democracy, everybody
wins. So we have really tried to use the uplifting
terms, and the non-critical terms, where there's nobody
at fault, In that way everybody's a winner, but we
still get at the tough issues, like the issue of trafficking
of women and girls, which has emerged and gotten great
attention at each of the Vital Voices conferences.
This issue really came to my attention in a very
serious way at the first Vital Voices conference,
in Austria. It wasn't a big headliner, we had a documentary
film that we showed there. There were serious workshops.
there was some of press attention to it, but it wasn't
on the big screen. But it did come out of the conference
as an important issue. We didn't highlight it as a
single issue, but we did find the right language,
and we brought in the right partners, and we made
people feel that all voices were heard and were part
of the process.
We don't single out somebody as the bad guy, and
somebody as having the right answers. I think that's
part of the combination of ways that we do our work
without being a threat.
Alicia Weston-Miles: What was the biggest
challenge in actually setting up the agency?
Theresa Loar: I'm the second person to have
this job. And this job was created because NGOs in
the human rights community went to Congress and said
there should be a particular position at a high level
of the State Department that focuses on women's human
rights. There's a lot of human rights attention, but
nobody looking at women's human rights. This job was
created five years or six years ago,
And women's human rights were being sort of just
brushed aside. No one was really looking at these
issues of violence against women. This was before
the UN Women's Conference.
So the challenge in this particular job was, there
were no resources to this job, it was a brand new
job, and nobody knew what the mandate was. Nobody
knew what the focus should be. So I had to try to
create the focus? I had to ask, should I look at everything
affecting women, discrimination, or violence, or health,
or reproductive rights, or what should I do? So I
talked to a lot of very wise people all over the government,
I talked to a lot of NGOs, people from other governments,
people on the Hill, and focused on two areas; promoting
womens' political participation, which turned into
Vital Voices, and promotin awareness on violence against
women, which had a number of components, but focused
primarily on trafficking.
The other part of my job is this Interagency Council
on Women, which President Clinton set up as a follow-up
to the UN Conference on Women. And that is a fabulous,
great mechanism, because it's a government-wide responsibility,
and it brings me into very close working relationship
with the First Lady, who's the honorary chair, and
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who's the chair
of the Council. This gives me a great network of high-level
women and men all over the government who are my partners
on all kinds of projects and work that I want to do.
They're just fabulous people, like Undersecretary
of Labor, and Deputy Secretary of State, and people
at Justice, and Health, and Transportation, and the
CIA, all over the government. It is a great network
of people to work with.
The challenge there was defining a mission. What
is it we do in order to follow up on a UN conference?
We were supposedly successful, because I have a 400-page
book that shows we were successful. We took this UN
document, that was a negotiated text, that said 189
nations around the world have come together to say
here's several areas in which we have strategies on
how to improve the lives of women, and here's what
countries need to do, and this is what our government
has done, in areas of education, and employment areas,
and education for girls, and areas of violence, and
areas of how to care for the elderly, and refugee
women. It was really very vague.
But getting people to work was fun. It was fun motivating
people, and of course, we had Madeleine Albright and
Hillary Clinton. I mean, who could be better? They're
highly motivating people. We would get Madeleine Albright
and Hillary Clinton together for a meeting, like this
meeting shown in the picture right above me, where
we had a whole bunch of people sitting there from
the State Department--
Every four or five months or so, up in the diplomatic
reception rooms of the State Department, we'd have
these interagency council meetings. Where in this
beautiful, ornate, diplomatic reception rooms, we
have Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Donna
Shalala, who is the Secretary of Health and Human
Services, who was the chair of the council for the
first six months or so.
And then we have all these council members, the highest-ranking
women in the government, and some men as well, and
all sitting around these tables and talking about
the programs they're working on, and giving each other
ideas.
And it's just like this great energy and commitment
and networking. It is just very highly motivating
to be sharing with each other what we were planning
to do.
Mira Vissell: What achievements are you most
proud of as the Director of the President's Interagency
Council on Women?
Theresa Loar: Well, when we were envisioning
at the Beijing conference, the First Lady gave this
powerful, powerful speech that women's rights are
human rights, and human rights women's rights. That
was a great, strong speech. It was almost like a promise
that we weren't going to just walk away from this.
And then we came back from Beijing, and started looking
at how our government could take some of those ideas
and build them into how our government develops policy.
We set up this interagency task force, and we did
this reporting back to NGOs all over the country,
and we developed a partnership with those NGOs, which
is something our government hadn't done before, that
is, to be very open with NGOs--
We did briefings here in Washington, and all across
the country to consider how to bring these issues
into foreign policy. We asked how do we develop these
ideas of supporting women, of building democracies,
and strengthening women in the process?
And when Madeleine Albright became our Secretary
of State, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton did
a speech together. They laid out this idea that advancing
the status of women is not just the right thing to
do; it's the smart thing to do. It helps support our
democracies around the world, and it helps support
economic prosperity. Now it is three years later,
and they (The State Department and Government) get
it now, because they see, it helps them get their
jobs done.
For example Colombia is a key country for us. If
they want Colombia as a country to thrive and they're
trying to help that country be strong because it's
in the US interest. We know if Colombia fails Latin
America's going to get really messed up. Well if trafficking
is rampant in Colombia, that country is going to cave
and fall apart. So they're helping to fight trafficking
and they need our help, because we know how to do
this. So I'm a consultant to them now. Ukraine is
another key country for us. In Ukraine trafficking
is rampant. They come in and ask for our help. So
they're putting money into fighting trafficking and
I'm their consultant in how to do that.
By the way, there are some dynamic women leaders
there, who have some great solutions. Vital Voices
can help put them on the world stage. They want to
come to us, and get our help to figure out how to
support getting women leaders of Ukraine out into
the world stage.
So the thing I'm proud about is the fact that this
concept, this idea that strengthening the role of
women is good for foreign policy. We were able to
turn that into real policy and to show people that
it can work, and that it's true, that it wasn't just
an idea. It really makes a difference. And having
the leadership of Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton,
it's just an unbelievable, you know, time in history.
We are here at the time when democracies are moving
forward, when military dictatorships are falling away,
and when communism's just falling aside, and to have
these women come on to the world stage--It's just
an incredible time in history, I think, I was just
very fortunate to be part of it. I think it will last
and I think this will be a permanent part of our foreign
policy.
You know Ambassador Pickering, who you had the great
privilege to just meet, is a very traditional foreign
policy ambassador, and has been in the State Department
for many years, and is considered, as you know, to
be one of the great State Department leaders. He was
in Eastern Europe recently, I saw him afterwards in
the State Department meeting rooms, and he told me
about a meeting he had at a shelter for trafficking
victims. He was very moved by what he saw. So he is
also very engaged in this issue of trafficking. I
mean, he has access to all the leadership positions
in the State Department, and he is committed to bringing
resources to this issue. So I am convinced that these
issues affecting women and girls, and their advancement,
is going to be a permanent part of our foreign policy.
Josh Lewis: In your statement to the House
Committee on International Relations, you said it's
not your policy to impose mandatory economic sanctions
towards governments that are known violators of human
rights. So, how can a government effectively respond
to known violators?
Theresa Loar: Well, we'd like to think like
good diplomats. I can give you an example. The government
of Ukraine asked for our help on trafficking, and
they got our help on trafficking, and there has been
some progress in what they're doing on trafficking
now. The ambassador from Ukraine to the U.S. came
up to me at a cocktail party here at the State Department
and said, you know, very informally. He said "When
I was ambassador from Ukraine to Israel, all of these
Ukrainian women who were being trafficked into Israel
came and asked for my help, and I didn't quite know
what to do, I didn't know how to get them back to
Ukraine, I didn't know how to reintegrate them into
society. This is quite a problem for us. I really
would like the US to help me."
And so we arranged it. He came in to see me a second
time, so he really reached out to us twice. He came
in and met with me separately in my office, with the
Ukraine desk. He had some meetings over in the First
Lady's office, and we arranged when the Secretary
of State was in Ukraine, to be able to meet with the
president of the country on this issue, which is quite
extraordinary. But they are admitting they have a
problem. It's a criminal activity involving their
citizens, and it's their citizens being trafficked.
That's very unusual. There was an openness, where
they could admit they have a problem, and they knew
that we would want to help them. If there are sanctions,
people are going to shut down. They're not going to
say, oh, we have a problem, will you help us? They're
going to have to hide it. So these victims are not
going to get helped. It's going to go completely underground,
and the criminal activity is going to go sky-high.
So our feeling is that if there can be an open environment,
where if someone come to us for help, we help them
write a piece of trafficking legislation, which may
not be perfect, but it's getting better.
We can provide some training for immigration officials
and law enforcement officials, which we are doing.
The First Lady's chief of staff (Melane Verveer) is
traveling to Ukraine to get us started. This is such
a significant thing, that the US and the government
of Ukraine are co-hosting training for law enforcement
officials. It is big enough in the former Soviet Union,
that the First Lady's chief of staff and assistant
to the President of the United States is traveling
to Ukraine for this. The press is covering it, and
that's the kind of thing that we want to encourage.
There's something to celebrate.
If there's sanctions, none of this is going to happen,
and it's going to be just another organized crime
activity that no one's going to pay attention to.
And we made these points to the Hill. I think there's
really mixed feelings about it, but I can tell you
lots of other stories where, on other issues sanctions
have not been helpful--
I understand from the point of view of a congressperson
who feels passionately, and wants to come down hard.
But I also know that, as a diplomat, and someone who
gets a lot of things done informally, sometimes the
softer approach is the more effective over the long
term.
Kyle Felder: I notice that there is only one
man on the President's Interagency Council, Scott
Busby, I believe. What role do men play in your efforts
to promote the involvement of women in politics around
the world?
How can men
take a larger role in this mission? Theresa Loar:
Well, the President of the United States set up the
Interagency Council, and many were very grateful to
him for doing that. Male representation on the Council
ebbs and flows, and we have actually had a good deal
of support from Capitol Hill, from some of the male
legislators on this. In the State Department, I would
say ninety percent of the people I have worked with
on this, from the assistant secretary to the regional
bureau, are men. Our ambassadors in the field, who carry
out the policies are men. So it really, it really does
vary. And from, our Vital Voices in the private sector,
it does vary completely. For all the men here in
the room, you're all welcome to join this, and I was
talking to Ward your teacher earlier, and saying that
I looked forward to a partnership with some of the projects
that he's working on in India. Because I think this,
the Vital Voices democracy project, democracy initiative,
is really about building sustainable democracies, and
empowering women, which levels the playing field.
It really is about playing catch-up. If you look at
sort of the representation of women in elective office
in the United States, we have a long way to go. Our
friends in the Nordic countries like to point that out
to us. They say, "You know, we'll help you figure that
out."
Alicia Weston-Miles: The work that you're
doing seems really important to me, and to the young
men and women of my generation. So I'm wondering why
I haven't heard of your organization before. Do you
find you have a hard time reaching young people of
America. Is media coverage a problem?
Theresa Loar: Well part of
it is that we've been at this at a hundred and ten mile
an hour speed of just working, working, working. That
means not promoting enough what we've done. Now that
we're on this more family-friendly work pace, traveling
less and stopping a little bit to tell the story of
what we do, for example I would not have had the time
to do this interview, no matter that Alyse asked me
to. She wouldn't be here either. She would have been
on the road. We just didn't have the time to tell the
story of what we were doing. Now we have great web sites,
and we o newsletters through emails. We just haven't
told much of the story of what we've done. We hope to
do more of that, but I would welcome ideas, actually,
from all of you, of how we get the story out. Because
I think part of the value of what you're doing gets
lost if people don't know what you're doing. I mean
you can't have impact if people aren't aware of what
you're doing. As an old advertising person I know you
can have the best product in the world, but if people
don't know about it, it's not going to have any impact.
So I would welcome ideas on other ways that we could
have impact on students at the high school level, university
level. I've started to do some speaking, you know,
around the US, that's also fun to do. It's great to
get reaction, you know, at the university level, and
at the high school level, it's fun to do.
Mr. Mailliard: I would think you'd have an
enormous support at the university level. The kids
are very ready for this.
Theresa Loar: Yes, it's interesting. I really like talking to
the foreign policy side. Because I think it's so interesting
to consider how do you take an issue that was not in
foreign policy, and how you weave it into foreign policy,
and see what impact it has. The question is, How do
you institutionalize it?
Jenny Johnston: Hillary Clinton said that
our global future depends on the willingness of every
nation to invest in its people, especially women and
children. While we as a country are trying to raise
status of women around the world, do you think that
we as a nation are investing enough in our own women
and children? And if not, where do you think that
we should be investing more?
Theresa Loar: I don't
think we invest enough in our children's education,
and certainly not in the inner city. And I think it's
still pretty depressing that it depends where you live
as to what kind of education you get. I think my children
are very lucky. I think all of us in this room are very
lucky at the kind of education that's available to us.
But it's still very uneven for kids in the United States,
what kind of education they get. I think we have a long
way to go on that. And education is everything. You
know, what kind of college you get into, as to what's
available to you in life.
Dante Branciforte: Now, given your experience,
if you could give a message to our generation, that
we really need to hear, what would it be?
Theresa Loar: Well I have to say, I have been very lucky in
having incredibly energetic young people work for me.
It's true! When I came into the State Department, my
husband and I thought this is great--we thought we just
were going to devote ourselves to government service.
We're going to travel around the world forever--And
then we found that we just didn't want to travel around
the world forever, and we came back to Washington, and
decided to stay put here for a while, and by the grace
of God, I got involved in this UN Women's Conference,
and got involved working with Mrs. Clinton. And then,
because career diplomats did not necessarily want to
work on this women's stuff because the did not really
understand it, I attracted a lot of young people. The
young people said "hey, you can do this, do it this
way, do it this way." That's what really engaged me. And
got me looking at doing a lot of different things. It
is people like Alyse Nelson were saying, Oh, do this,
you know, try it this way." I have been very lucky,
working for Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton.
I mean, if you're going to pick great bosses, I can't
imagine more exciting people in the entire world to
work with than Hillary Clinton. I had the opportunity
to travel around the world with her, to see the world
through the way people see Hillary Clinton. Around the
world, they, like, lay out, you know, like, not red
carpet, but I mean, carpets of orchids, you know, in
northern Thailand. Just the kind of reaction people
have to her, it's just powerful, to her speeches, in
individual meetings, with heads of state. The kind of
reaction is just incredible. To have powerful people
above me, and then to have dynamic people working with
me, and egging me on, I've just been really, really
lucky. I think my main advice is to be flexible.
And I'm going to say this, though I'm the worst at it,
is don't take it too seriously. Because you don't know
where life's going to lead you. You know, you don't
know where you're going to go next. Give yourself a
little leeway as to where life's going to carry you.
I don't take that advice, but you should certainly take
it. Somebody should be taking that advice (laughter).
Mr. Mailliard: You've had an opportunity to
meet some pretty fantastic people. Can you tell us
maybe a couple moments that you've had along the way
that have been really special?
Theresa Loar: Well, there's a fabulous
woman in Northern Ireland, who you may have heard of,
named, Mo Mowlam, she's, actually she's a British woman,
who was part of Tony Blair's cabinet. Her job was secretary
of state for Northern Ireland. She was in his cabinet,
responsible for the governance of Northern Ireland,
at the time that the peace talks were being held. When
they finally made their big breakthrough, in the Good
Friday peace agreement, which kind of fell apart, but
really it is the peace framework that ultimately was
successful. And her name was Mo Mowlam, Dr. Marjorie
Mowlam. You have to find out more about her, because
she is one of the great leaders of my generation. She's
probably in her fifties, I'd say. You ought to look
her up because she's one of the most interesting people
I have ever met. She's just a riot! She just has a
sense of power and authority, but she's completely unassuming.
I first met her in a private meeting room at the White
House. Because I did not know she was going to be in
there, neither did I know Mrs. Clinton was going to
be there. I thought it was a meeting with some staff.
I was a tad late, okay? And of course, a tad embarrassed
that I was late for the meeting with the First Lady
and the this woman. We were planning a Vital Voices
meeting. I walk in and I was asked to lay out what we
were planning for Northern Ireland. You asked about
obstacles, every obstacle was put in our way. Why we
ccouldn't do a Vital Voices in Northern Ireland, because
it would be in the way of the President's trip. So
we had a very good conversation and she said well you
come see me, we'll work this all out. And she lives
in a fabulous official residence for the secretary of
state from Northern Ireland. The five counties of Northern
Ireland, belonged to England, for a while, right? And
the person who has that position of secretary of state,
lives in a castle, Hillsborough Castle, which is absolutely
beautiful. She said come visit me, and it's beautiful,
and we had these meetings, and she's the most informal
person you can imagine. She's just, just takes us through
how we're going to do this, how we're going to set this
up, and kicks aside every barrier, and at the end of
the day, we have a three-day conference set up, and
there's no barriers whatsoever. When I was leaving
and, the man who's been walking me through all this
says, "let me tell you about this woman." And this is
what stayed in my mind. This woman had very severe health
challenges all through the Good Friday peace negotiations.
He said his favorite memory of this woman was during
the peace negotiations, she would walk around, she had
some kind of operation, brain tumor--His favorite memory
was, her walking around with her wig in one hand, and
her heels in the other, hopping around saying aye, we
got to get this done. Her lack of vanity, and her determination
just shamed everybody into working towards peace. There's
so much affection for her. I would take the plane back
from Belfast to London, back and forth, and sit down
and talk to people next to me, and they were always
impressed. They would say, "Oh, you're going to see
Mo, please give her this note." They just love her.
She's just one of those people. You have to look her
up. She's in London now. You have to read about her.
You have to find out more about her, because she's going
to come back into the scene again in some big way, and
she's just a truly, truly great person. Somebody who
made a huge difference in Northern Ireland. The great
thing about her, she came from a working class background,
in Britain, and before there had always been more upper
crust British aristocrats who had come into her position.
For the people in Northern Ireland, that wasn't such
a terrific fit. And she's got the confidence of the
Irish government. So she just had a very unique and
wonderful way of bridging. And that was a big element
in being able to develop the peace process. And she
was just, oh, she was just a
Mr. Mailliard: Alyse was telling me about
your trip to the Ukraine where you went in with cameras,
and you interviewed women who were doing vital work
in those countries. I would imagine that when you
go into those countries, and you meet those women,
it must be like throwing a lifeline out. I imagine
that that changes lives. Suddenly they're feeling
heard and noticed. Can you say something about the
power of that, in those women's lives?
Theresa Loar: Well we hear what people are doing, for example,
this woman, Nadine Pavoreaux (phonetic) in Haiti, who
came to a Vital Voices conference in Latin America that
brought together women from the whole hemisphere. You
know, Haiti is in a very bad state, and it's so dangerous
they had to postpone the elections. But she came back
from our conference determined, without any substantial
encouragement from us, though our embassy is very engaged.
She thinks Vital Voices is a great organizing, uplifting
mechanism for women of Haiti. She organized her own
Vital Voices of Haiti, which Alyse tracks carefully,
because she reads every cable that comes in, and returns
every call. This woman organized her own Vital Voices
of the Caribbean, which we also barely knew anything
about, though we were encouraging it to happen, and
the First Lady actually was able to send a message to
encourage it. And someone from our office went down.
They feel a connection to the United States and value
what they heard there when they got to meet some of
the people here. We were so optimistic. There is something
about the Americans which some people find, Europeans,
find annoying, but others find so positive, is that
we're optimistic. We think things can get better, you
know? There was some polling that's been done by
Joan Dunlap, who's this really terrific woman in New
York, who has been very active for years in the field
of women's advancement. She's doing a project now called
Women's Lens, on foreign policy. Her polling shows that
something like one third of American women are very
interested in what's going on with the lives of women
overseas, and want to be engaged in improving that.
We're finding that when we do meet some of these individual
women, like Nadine, that they feel so touched and empowered,
just knowing that there's somebody in Washington who's
tracking what's going on with them. When the First
Lady attends or sends a message to a conference that
one of these women organizes, and it is known that she's
connected to the First Lady. It is very empowering.
There was a woman in Belarus, who came to one of our
first Vital Voices conferences. Although Belarus is
in Europe, it's still an extremely repressive regime.
The whole idea of democracy has not caught on there.
They have severe human rights restrictions. There's
a woman human rights activist who came to that conference
and had her picture taken with the First Lady. Our embassy
did a reporting cable to us, which found its way to
our office. This woman took her picture with Hillary
Clinton, she brought it in with her, and she met with
the president of the country. She brought it in, and
she has some serious human rights concerns to raise
with the president. She brought in her picture of Hillary
Clinton, she showed it to the president, and she said
look, this is whom I am. I met with Hillary Clinton,
so you take me seriously, and that means something.
She is pointing out that she's not a nobody; she's not
somebody to be messed around with. She met with Hillary
Clinton. And the ambassador wrote back with great pride
to say, you know, this means something. And I think
that was very touching to all of us.
(End of recorded interview)
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