they are alone, they do not care, they will rise to do what? take care of their children. but it is not until a woman is about 50, 55 or 60, and she's all by herself, her spouse has left her, her children now are grown and still living in her house. it's true. that she finally starts to say, what about me? so, we can sit here, all we want and we can quote stats and we can blame this and we can say it's always been that way, but i'm here to tell you, that every single one of you in this room and that are watching, you are not victims to your circumstances unless you want to be. you can pick yourself up, you can sit here like you are

sitting here, and like you are sitting here and like every single one of us is sitting here and you can be more and have more, but you have got to do it for yourself. when women come together, rather than working against one another, which, girlfriend, they do. i cannot even begin to believe how much women love when i fail. as if when i fail at something, it's going to make them a bigger success. their ratings will be better on their tv shows, people will buy more of their books. women, we have got to stand by one another. we have got to help one another. so today, i'm sitting here and i'm lucky enough to meet cici and cici is telling me what's

going on in south dakota and how all these women and these kids don't get to eat because they're trying to cut the expenses from feeding these children at school. and cici tell everybody the stat, when children don't eat, what happens to them? >> especially children, poverty and not having enough food to eat can affect the brain development of children. it can affect their bone development and it can hinder their growth. >> so cici tells me this, so what do i do? i'm not going to washington and tell them about it, i'm not going to say somebody else should fix that problem, i shook on it with cici, i'm going to her reservation and i'm going to speak. i'm going to do it on my dime to say what can we teach them what they need to know about money, what they need to know about credit scores, what they need to

do so that they can stay away from the payday loans that people want them to take out. and in a very strange way, it's everything everybody's doing right here on stage. but it's what you're going to do for yourselves as well when you go home. are you going to stop giving the store away to family members who could be working but they're not working, so you're supporting them. are you going to stop doing things that squander all of this money that you are making. so you're going to teach all of these women how to open a business and get all these grants. so what are they going to do with the money then? they're going to give it to their kids. because they don't matter. the day you matter to who you are to yourselves and you're willing to not come off of that

point that you matter is the day that true change in the united states of america begins. >> i love having these conversations because instead of getting 90 minutes to talk about these topics, we get two hours. and i'm glad we have got two hours, because there's a lot of stuff to follow up on. before i speak to sheryl, sheryl had done expert work on global poverty. this is not just -- listen to these stats. the gap in poverty between men and women is wider in this

country than anywhere else in the western world. 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world, 70% are women. please welcome the co-author of "half the sky" she's a pulitzer prize winner, please welcome sheryl edon. the book is called "half the

sky" because women hold up half the sky. one of the things that we know works around the world and we'll come back again in a second in terms of solutions, but one of the things we know that works around the world is microfinancing. women all over the world are starting businesses with microfinancing loans. i always give the person who has waited the longest the most range to go where they want to go. >> thank you very much, i am honored to be on a panel with all of these women, i have a feeling there's nothing left to say. but actually as i have been listening, there are many things here that echo what i have seen in global poverty as well. i am not in the field actually helping these people, i'm the

messenger, so that's really important. but it has given me a very broad view. in the first case, i think overall in this country, we tend to look at poverty as a drag on the economy. we tend to look at people in poverty as a drag on the economy. and julian explained so much of the statistics, why do we have to pour more of our government effort into this subject. we have to move from discussion of the problem, people in poverty as a problem, as people in pofr poverty as part of the potential solution. if we are trying to grow the economy, where are you going to get the people who are going to potentially help grow that economy? it's in people who are in poverty. you do need the foundation, education, that's very, very important. but i have seen solutions in education around the world that really could work well here. i mean some places in kenya, some places in cambodia have

done a better job with education, in china, than they have here in the u.s. and that's kind of embarrassing considering we have such experts here and wealth and -- and i would like to draw on the experience of china. i know a lot of people think that china is run by dictators, they have done terrible thing to the dissidents, but they also have done something remarkable. just 20 years ago we were talking about the year of the woman. 20 years ago, most of the people in china were in poverty and they were under a communist society. so not only did they have to come back with an economic challenge, but they also had a political challenge and a social challenge. certainly the government can set certain goals, but really what happens is it's done at a local level. there's a lot of bureaucracy in china, and the u.s. is still full of brewer rourke si.

if you try to change things, you keep bumping up against it. but 20 years ago they said that education was really critical. because if we can educate our girls, even if they can just get to the middle school level, they can start working in factories. we here in the u.s. called them sweat shops, but that they the best alternative that middle school and high school graduates had. so they work and they worked their butt off, the factories were located very near the community. maybe it's not factory, maybe it's something else, but it's something that gives a goal for the people in the impoverished community, to live for, potential jobs, they know that if they just graduate from middle school, even if it's a vocational school, they can get that job at that local shop or that local factory. so girls as they became woman nay started working in the

factories and bringing home a paycheck and they elevateded themselves in their own communities. that's giving people a way out of poverty. a highway into poverty, but there's no side streets out, there are side streets out. we need to make sure that congress focuses on solution, not the drag that poverty presents. >> madam secretary, sheryl said something now they want to come back to you on first. for those of you watching this program right now, you will invariably say that this is the absolute wrong approach for government to be making poverty a priority. that we have spent more money than we should have spent trying to lift women and children out of poverty. >> you can't make choices about

cutting back during a time when we are not fully in recovery mode. we still have very high rates of unemployment, you heard it here, 8.3 whatever percent, we know it's even higher in some communities, and women have suffered the most. while we're at war in the workforce, we're not making the same wages comparable to where we should be and with men. i'm talking about more investments in changing and education. we need to put $8 billion in k-12 and also community colleges. employers keep telling me and when i travel afternoon the country, i want better trained people, i want them to be flexible, adaptable. i don't want the phd, i want the person in the middle, the technician. and there's a lot of folks out there that can be trained for these kinds of jobs.

but something that was said earlier about empowering women to run for office. emily's list is a good example of starting to give funding to support women. i was someone who ran for office, and got early support from women. but also learning that you have to build coalitions with other people. and women look at problems very differently from males. not so much who gets credit for the solution, but how do we work together to get that solution done well. that's what i see continually, with women i have served with in congress. we have actually lost more women in congress because we had a bad recession and more women had to work and stay at home. and it's still not easy for an elected individual, a woman, to be able to balance everything. so let's have fairness in the work place. let's treat women easier and better if they decide to go into a career as an elected official. there are a lot of women who ran

for office that are not rich. and i know many of them, they gave up a lot of lucrative things, even the security of their family to serve the public. we consider ourselves in many ways as public servanservants. i know a lot of women who serve in congress that care about domestic violence, about womening get the upper hand and that everyone has a fair shot at education. >> madam secretary, i'll raise this issue again. let me keep asking you these -- at least in politic question. here's another. the numbers are clear, black and latino women are twigs as likely to be in poverty as white women. the numbers are clear about that. black women, the numbers right now are so abysmal, for black

women in particular, for black people more broadly, the numbers are worse for us. black women in particular. there's a deafening silence in black america with regard to the obama white house. and this administration. and what they ought to be doing about poverty across the board. to my mind, the president hasn't used the word poverty enough. but what we can not debate is that there has been a deferential silence on the part of black people, and black women specifically. i love barack obama, i love michelle obama, i love the two kids, i love all of that, but there's been a deathly silence about poverty among black women. >> when you look at melanie campbell, and people have a thing friday and she talked about the voting patterns of african-american women. we are the most loyal democrats

that there are. we voted overwhelmingly, 97%, someone said for president obama. now having done that, what have you done for me, lately? that's really a question that we have to ask. but i think there's a schizophrenia in the african-american community about president obama. everybody loves him. i've got to love him. you know, the brother's fine, he's smart. i mean he's got it going on, he's eloquent. the singing does not im press me. i resist the stereotype that all black people have to sing and dance. the love makes a lot of people silent. and this president has had enough challenges, people, you know, think, well he has had

some challenges, why pile it on. but when you speak about self interest, you're not piling it on. you're talking about what really needs to happen. technically, given the recession, i think that the president should have done jobs first and then health care. by doing health care first, he used up a lot of political capital, took a long time then he gets these republicans and tea party people who do not understand that they get social services. tea party people get social security. their kids go to publicly supported schools. but they're saying put, put, put, put. but they diverted the conversation by talking about reproductive rights as opposed to economic rights. if you don't like abortion, don't have one, that's all. it's real simple. but 2010 made it very difficult for president obama to get what

he said he wanted around jobs. i mean if you look at the end of 2011, it was a disgraceful time to watch republicans whose districts had high unemployment oppose the jobs bill. it was disgraceful. and you saw mr. boehner with his posse, he had his posse behind him, we're not going to pass the jobs bill. about four days later, december 23, you saw him standing there by himself, saying well, we'll do it for two months. african-americans i think are extremely understanding of president obama, but that should not prevent us from speaking in our own self-interest. it should not prevent african-american women, president obama has done some wonderful things for women, as our secretary mentioned, the lily led better act, which basically talks about yal pay

and the fact that you can sue. lily ledbetter couldn't sue because she didn't find out that she was paid less until self-years later and the staff yu statute of limitations had run out. fewer than 3% of the fortune 500 companies offer child care on site. some of them say they offer child care, what they offer is a hot line. so you can call the hot line, where can i take my child. if you've been calling everybody else, a hot line isn't going to help you at that point. there are things that women can say, but i think everyone has talked about the way that women have been disorganized, the ways women work against each other,

we don't have the coalitions that they need to have. when carol mosley-brown ran for the senate, i can give you a litany of other african-american women and women of color that didn't get it the first time around. here's the other piece, okay, can you imagine a president gingrich, or a president romney? or a president santorum? we might as well just check our wombs at the store if santorum would be president. so for any flaws we see in president obama, i think in this season, he's better than any alternative that you can look at. now should we turn the heat up? absolutely, the heat needs to be turned up, but we need to speak up, i mean i was disappointed, i was so glad that we we have a

latina on the supreme court. i'm very mad that we don't have an african-american woman on the supreme court. >> so this whole -- what's interesting here, there's three things i want to say really quickly. this notion about both individual responsibility and collective responsibility. both have to happen. in terms of elections and running, let's be a little bit real here about stechb citizen and how much money it costs to run. and that is also a self-fulfilling prophecy that we need to deal with. because as you said, think about who's in congress. it's not the people's house anymore. the one thing i would actually just broaden in terms of what fay said before, and look, i'm part of the labor movement, i'll give you one statistics that's

totally completely sobering to me. between 1973 and 2000, the number of people who were in unions went from 34% to 8%. in the same period of time income inequality rose 40%. that was for us a way of creating collective work, creating community and labor together. have the coalitions we're talking about. let's be a little bit real and i'm trying not to be political, but it's not simply a war on women. it is a war on voting. i walked through that march to montgomery and looked at what was going on in terms of alabama, but worse on the voter id laws, is the fact that in alabama we have the most vile anti-immigration law, so essentially anyone who is

perceived to be undocumented can no longer leave their house for fear of being arrested. and so it's not just -- so what we have right now, and this is part of how we need to fight this, is that you have two very, very different philosophies, one that says, okay, we have had a really tough time, how do we create both the individual responsibility, plus the safety nets and the opportunities for a fair shot, you need to do both. versus a philosophy that basically just says, we're going to take away rights from people and that's what we have to fight about right now in the next few months. >> thank you. >> i want to get back to the question that you posed to julia, because i think that there are a number of areas in which by the markers of a society's well-being, that black

women fare least well. least well, whether they are the markers of health care, whether th they -- whether they are educational statistics, but what we have not discussed, it seems to be just a political forum, but what we have not discussed is the enormity of power in the plaque culture and to define women in terms that are not dignified and are not wore third of being perceived, that are not worthy of being perceived as being equal. the characterizations and the stereotypes that are re-enforced about black women in our society really deserve an uprising among black women at this point.

it's simply the lack of our prevalence in popular culture, in advertising, in all of the imagery that sends very strong messages, very strong visual messages to say this is equal, that this individual deserves the same respect and treatment are just fading in a way that for those of us who came of age in the '60s and '70s. so the largest societal value system is really spg we challenge. and the public conversation really all need to be challenged. with respect to black women. >> i'm glad you said that. >> just so you know, is that i am a black woman trapped in a white woman's body.

just outside chicago. >> to face one about media, let me just offer a quick confession here and -- anyway, i'll put it out there and we'll talk. i have done these symposiums as all of you know around the country for years now and this is the first time i have had the opportunity to moderate an all woman panel. this is the most difficult symposium that my people have ever helped me produce. trying to get focus on this, trying to get media attention about this, i'm thankful, that's why i'm thankful for wbai. if you're watching on cspan right now, i thank cspan, if you're watching on pbs, i thank pbs. because i have done so many of these, suze, when you put

together an all male panel, it's not hard for me to get the funding that we need to have that conversation. what say you about -- beyond just black women, that poverty is just a question, an issue, particularly women and children in poverty, that we just don't think are sexy enough to talk about, even though you talk about money every week. >> what's interesting about me talking about money every week is that for 11 years now, i have had a show on cnbc, for the past four or five years, it's been the number one rated show on cnbc. but you wouldn't know it, you wouldn't see it, you wouldn't hear anybody talking about it and you really wouldn't see the support that somebody truthfully of my stature should have and i'm here to tell you ladies and gentlemen, i do not have it.

and as much as you think i do, i do not. i have to fight and crawl and beg and scratch for every single thing that i still to this day create. so women do not have a place, in my opinion in media, especially in business economic media, they don't have it the way that they should and i think what you said was so true, and because it's so true, it's so sad, there's only one correction that i would like to make on this panel and that's with you, saying women hold up half the sky. ladies, we hold up the entire sky. >> and i'm just mincemeat.

i take your point. >> i want to answer your question, because i think the reason it's very difficult to talk about poverty is because in a country whose god is money, and that's true, when you classify yourself as poor, you might as well be a leper, because nobody wants to call themselves poor, and when you read it, it's uncomfortable. >> but half of us are. >> it's part of our collective, but it's a part of our collective that we're in denial about it. and, you know, i think it's because of what we haven't said as someone living in this country that comes from traditional values and good values, what we haven't said is that what's going on in the collective in our country is that the values in this country have gone to hell. they have gone to hell.

and what we see in the media, what's going on with the republican debates is embarrassing. and what we see in the media and what we have seen over the last few years in the media, what we put out in the world is that the money is god and if you don't have it, and by any means necessary get it, you're nothing. and i think the important thing is that, what we know is that women are the holders of the values. and we have to go back to upholding what is really good. when we say that immigrant children should not have education, what happened from the time our country was founded, we wanted all children to have an education. what happened to those values? we have to relook at what we believe in the collective. and we have to