Remarks at the CEO Summit on Women and the Economy

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Sheraton Waikiki

Honolulu, Hawaii

November 11, 2011

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, good afternoon, everyone. First, let me apologize for being late. It has been quite a packed day, and there’s a great deal of excitement and energy and hard work going on. I want to thank Nina and tell her how much I appreciate what she does and what she’s doing today to help highlight a part of the work of the APEC Summit, and something we hope and trust is also of importance to the CEO Summit.

I want to thank Monica Whaley and the National Center for APEC, Craig Mundie from Microsoft, Mike Ducker from FedEx, who couldn’t be here today, and everyone who helped make this event possible.

I’m delighted to be with you because I think that we really are making what I call a pivot. As the war in Iraq ends and we transition in Afghanistan, U.S. foreign policy is moving toward the Asia Pacific. We need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy to put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. And one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in the Asia Pacific region.

This meeting reflects the Obama Administration commitment to extending our diplomacy beyond traditional channels and engaging directly with non-state actors – the private sector, the civil society, the real confusion of interests that are out there that make a real difference in how a society thinks and acts. And we have a lot of partnerships that we have been working on.

And finally, I want to address an issue that we really made a highlight of our year of chairing the APEC Summit, and that is women and girls. In September, we had an APEC Summit on Women and the Economy in San Francisco. And the member economies of the region signed a declaration affirming our commitment to improving women’s access to capital and markets, to building women’s capacities and skills, and supporting the rise of women leaders in both the public and private sector. We agreed to pursue a fundamental transformation, a paradigm shift in how governments make and enforce laws and policies, how businesses invest and operate, how people make choices in the marketplace.

As business leaders from across the Asia Pacific region, you know firsthand that when women enjoy greater access to jobs and opportunities, there is a ripple effect across entire economies. Businesses have more consumers, families spend and save more, farmers produce more food, education improves, and so does political stability. A new report from the World Bank confirms that this is simply smart economics. If women participate more fully in the economy, the bank found, productivity is likely to rise, development outcomes for the next generation will improve, and institutions will be more representative.

So at a time when the global economy is still struggling, we cannot afford to ignore this potential. In short, when we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and indeed the world.

As you look across the economic landscape, you can see the impact that women are already having and the obstacles that still stand in our way. Economists estimate that women consumers will control $15 trillion in spending by the year 2014. And by 2028, women will be responsible for about two-thirds of consumer spending worldwide. That is the market of the future.

But participation has to go beyond buying products to making and selling them. Today, more than half a million enterprises in Indonesia and nearly 400,000 in South Korea are headed by women. Women run fully 20 percent of all of China’s small businesses. All across Asia, women continue to dominate light manufacturing sectors which have proved so crucial to the region’s development. And women-owned businesses, which now provide for 16 percent of all U.S. jobs, are projected to create nearly one-third of the new jobs anticipated over the next seven years.

Yet a new report released at the recent G-20 Summit found that small businesses owned by women are less likely than those run by men to find the resources and support they need to grow into larger enterprises. And we still see significantly less participation by women in the biggest firms, especially at the highest levels. Today, only about 3 percent of the CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies are women.

So you might ask yourself, why, in 2011, are women still seemingly so shut out of the economy? Laws, customs, and values all contribute to the economic glass ceiling that continues to hold back progress across the Pacific. Too many women in APEC countries don’t have the same inheritance rights as men, so they can’t inherit property or businesses owned by fathers and spouses. Some don’t have the right to confer citizenship on their children, so their families have less access to housing and education. And they must constantly renew residency permits, making it harder for them to work. Some are even subject to different taxes than men. And too often, they are denied access to credit, and may even be prohibited from opening bank accounts, signing contracts, purchasing property, incorporating a business, or filing a lawsuit without a male guardian. And women entrepreneurs are still more likely to face higher interest rates, be required to collateralize a higher share of any loan, and have shorter-term loans.

Now these aren’t just obstacles to prosperity for individual women; they are obstacles to prosperity for every business and every economy. So what can we do about it? How can we work together to reduce the obstacles and open the way for more women to participate more fully? Well, the San Francisco Declaration we agreed to outlines a path forward. We must commit to giving women entrepreneurs more access to capital so they can start and grow their own businesses. We must examine and reform our legal and regulatory systems so women can avail themselves of the full range of financial services. We must improve women’s access to markets, so those who start businesses can keep them open. For example, we need to correct the problem of information asymmetry, making sure women are informed about opportunities for trade, and orienting technical assistance so they serve women as well as men. And of course, I believe, as you would guess, we must support the rise of women leaders in the public and private sector so they can use their own unique experiences and perspectives.

Now, Goldman Sachs has estimated that reducing barriers to women’s participation in the economy would increase GDP in the United States by 9 percent, in the Eurozone by 13 percent, and in Japan by 16 percent. By the year 2020, it could lead to a 14 percent rise in per capita incomes in APEC economies such as China, Russia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Korea. And that is why the United States is putting these issues at the top of our diplomatic and economic agenda. It’s not only, in our view, the right thing to do; it is clearly the smart thing as well.

Now, many businesses are already getting this, and I want to applaud all of you who are. For example, Walmart has committed to doubling the amount of goods it buys from women-owned businesses around the world by 2016, and to invest $100 million to help women develop their job skills, including women who work on the farms and in the factories overseas that are Walmart suppliers.

Coca-Cola’s 5 BY 20 campaign aims to support 5 million women entrepreneurs worldwide by 2020. And NGOs such as WEConnect, Vital Voices Global Partnership, the Kauffman Foundation, and Count Me In have launched new partnerships with companies from American Express to ExxonMobil to help women entrepreneurs network, learn new skills, and seize new opportunities.

So let’s work together to unlock the vast untapped promise of women’s economic participation. In San Francisco, I said we have entered an age of participation, a time when, because of technological transformation and economic and political transitions, every person, regardless of gender or other characteristics, is poised to contribute to society and to the global marketplace. Economies and political systems that are making the shift more effectively and rapidly are dramatically outperforming those that are not.

In fact, we had been following this because we have seen what a difference it could make at this particular time in the global economy, and we can’t leave anybody behind, and we can’t leave any opportunity untapped. So I look forward to hearing what some of you may do, working with you to translate the good intentions of the San Francisco Declaration and summits like this one and the ongoing agenda of APEC into concrete change on behalf of men and women.

So thank you for being part of this exciting CEO summit, and I look forward to hearing the results of the program that you’re part of. Thank you.

For full interview, go to website:  http://tinyurl.com/6sya4ey