captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 you know, making your correction officer fill out a few and you can be released. it's a new treatment to reduce the number of inmates. all around the world. think about it. it might be a solution. i have been hearing what you have said and thinking about men and women and i have two basic assumptions to share before i get into the point. first of all, as you can see, we are sitting all of us with our traditional dressing. i am wearing my traditional retirement general suit. [ laughter ]

the second assumption that i would like to share with you is, because we don't have enough time, we're going to speak about the differences between women and men and it's a generalization of the issue. you cannot get into details. you cannot base now on researches. so take it in proportion, and i would say that there are differences, from my personal experience. i have been the commissioner of the israeli prison service by the year 2000 up to the end of 2003, which, if you know, it was the time of the second intefadeh, and all of a sudden, within less than three years, the number of what we call security inmates has been risen from less than 700 to almost 4,000, so there was a need to find human resources to deal with such a

huge number of new inmates within a short while. i leave it here as is and i will get back to the point by the end of what i have to tell you. or i want to tell you. speaking about abilities and qualifications and skills, there are some differences, and i can share with you the knowledge and the experience that women brings to the table some kind of different skills. mostly what we call soft skills. this comes from ancient days. the first point that i want to share with you is the ability to see the whole picture, but at the same time to identify and give your attention to the details of that picture. it came from the very beginning. women gave birth and raised the

children and heads to harvest or to cook or heads to do their laundry and bring water from the river and whatever. everything. simultaneously. there is a need, an essential need to be able to do it. it gives you an ability to see the whole picture and identify what is going on at the same time. a second what i would call soft skill is the ability to campaign. first of all we contain our children before we gave birth. then because of the fact that you were the person, it doesn't make it work. you have to deal with the children. usually we had more than one child so there these differences.

you have to deal with it. that's the second soft skill that women bring to the table. the third one is the ability to balance between. aren't we all day and all the day balancing between career, family, i have to be here, no i have to be there. i have to deal with that situation while someone is demanding my attention on the other side. that's the way we are living. so balancing. i shared with my colleagues here that sometimes it's like the person who is going on the rope. >> the high wire. >> the high wire or in the circus. but there is one difference. he has a kind of a security network. we don't have it.

i would say that the fourth point is being able to share your leadership with others to work in teamwork. it doesn't mean that you are not a leader. it doesn't mean when you have to be the only who makes the decision, you do it. but usually we share the information. we share and give the people the opportunity to feel that they are part of the decision making. they are not only those to implement it. when i want to get back to the point, i said it at the beginning, it is not a judge -- i'm not judging anything. it doesn't mean that it is better than or less than. it just brings to the table diversity and just brings a wide range of abilities. what i'm thinking about is when you bring men and women together

so the abilities come from this side and the other side and they bring up together in a synergy better, much better outcome and i can share with you from my experience to the last point with your permission. >> sure. >> one is that i told you that there was a need to put some new wardens in these new facilities. so when i came into position, there were two female wardens out of i think 20 facilities, one for the female, of course, and one for juveniles. after three years, there were eight wardens. few others in a core function that after seven years since i

retired, now we have in the israeli prison service five writing deer gen brigadier generals female and one major general female. when i was there, there was only colonel. there was no high ranking officer above colonel. when you are there, you have to do it. these women were talented. not just because they are women. they have been there all the time. you just need to identify, to define and to put them, to give them the chance when they are acting in the best way. the last point is from my experience again. i have met not very few men that have developed these soft skills and unfortunately i have met not so very few women that have forgotten it, so we need to do it all together. >> let me ask you a question.

when you then increased the number of women wardens, did you see any difference in how they -- i mean you've made these statements about women in general but did you actually see it in the prison system? >> yes, of course. it's not only the wardens. it's wardens, it's wing commanders, it's security officers. it comes from the environment, first of all, and i think that's an achievement for itself, because it brings you the community to deal in a way with the inmates in a different way, less tension. it's much better for both sides. >> and so probably one of the reasons it comes or the reasons that it comes to the environment is the various attributes or the characteristics that you were describing about being able to listen. >> and the respect that the inmates are paying for women in such positions.

>> that's very interesting. >> yes, it is. >> to stay with this issue of security that you both talked about, doesn't the danger of the situations stop you from being able to do your work? >> let me pick up from here. because this is so important. i come from afghanistan and i'm an afghan woman. this is so much related to the work that we do in afghanistan. i just want to share a very special experience, a story that we all women faced. it was june 2nd, 2010, the first day of national conservative piece jirga in kabul. kabul was quiet because the jirga of our government were hosted 1,600 afghans from all afghanistan out of which 347 were women.

a group of us got together in one car because only that car had access to the jirga tent due to so much security. we have to be very careful to wear, to look as traditional as possible, because we were really going to meet some of the men who were coming from conventions where they don't actually sit with women at the same platform. so finally we reached the place and we had to go back different checkpoints of the president security, because the president was coming, president karzai was coming. finally at 10:00 a.m. officially the jirga started and after the official inauguration and opening, it was in the middle of president karzai's speech that three rockets hit. >> wow. >> and these rockets, two hit a little bit far behind the tent, but one rocket was just behind the tent.

>> were these all at once? >> one after the other. >> how long was in between? >> a second? >> oh, okay. >> a second. >> all right. >> and i just got a list from my colleague outside saying suicide attacker was outside the gate trying to get inside. it was such a tense situation for all of us. our life was at risk. but what women did? we decided that we are going to continue our stay in the jirga because the jirga was for three days. we took the risk, and we didn't know what's going to happen next. the second or the third day. we had to actually face the challenge of actually fighting with our family. >> i was going to say. >> because my mother was telling me don't go. "you are going to kill yourself, don't go." but i think peace is so

important for all of us. but we are contributing in afghanistan. we are really working very hard and yes, we are risking our lives and we are proud of what we are doing. thank you very much. >> and you also have been able to get women into the major conferences too. >> right. >> is it hard for them when they go back home, like from these conferences? are families proud or is there some retribution? do they get criticized when they go back? >> defers from family to family in afghanistan, because culturally we are, i always use this word, diverse. we have so much diverse. the way i live in kabul, a woman do not live in a province which is an hour's drive, so it defers from family to family. >> right, and so have any of you -- yeah, rebecca? >> also imagining her age and the environment she works in,

and being so confident and ready to face the danger, you know, just looking at that, and it comes from her so forceful and very strong. >> they get used to it, like for example, when we were arrested, i told my mother in the morning that we are going to do this, we are going to the port. she saw in al jazeera that 22 ladies were arrested and she said i knew you would be one of them. >> right, right. rebecca, you were a freedom fighter, right? >> yes, i was. i was. it was not easy. >> tell us about that. >> i don't know. if the audience thinks i look like a freedom fighter. do i look like it? do i look like a general? >> that's right, do you look like a general, right. >> yes. i think it's good for a flash back, but i would love to make

it a comparison. let it be a world of xar soin moving from war to peace and looking at the dangers and security and protection. you are aware of course from your reading that the war broke out, the civil war in 1983. i got married in 1986. i am sure phi asked a married couple here you would talk about your honeymoon in paris and any of these parts of the world. rebecca's story is to have her honeymoon in the bush. >> you don't have to pay. >> i don't have to. so it was not easy. it was not easy. the life of bush is not an easy one. it's not a nearby bush that we are talking about. it's real forest, you know, where there are animals and you have to look for a place where you can be secure also to be able to carry on with your work.

so here it is in the bush, you know. it's real bush. it's real forest. it's difficult. you have nowhere to sleep but to find yourself a place to sleep. >> where did you sleep? >> you have to use your mind. when you are out of a town or city you can even use your brain better. you can use twiggs of trees, you know, sometimes we cut these trees and then you can knit -- it would imagine to be a bed, and if you really yearn for a mattress, you can get grass around and stuff it and make a very good bed. it's your choice. what you like. what makes you comfortable providing that it will be pinching you throughout the night if you have to sleep. also you know, there was a time that there were air drops for food to reach some of the people who are displaced, and that's

where you get promoted and you would be able to use the boxes that used for air dropping food, you take these boxes and you make a makeshift of a bed. you would imagine it of course psychologically and sleep on it and make a bed. it was not easy. it was rough. there was a lot of danger. it was a worse situation. also i wouldn't forget how we were relying on the communities. because you don't have any supply of food. you have to look for food to eat apart from picking what is there and the type of animals you could get to eat and it's good to try it. any type of animal and a tree and leaves. if it doesn't kill you, then it is food. also you know, but we also relied on the communities, you know, the communities around, people who are in villages, real villages, and then you know, they have their eggs, they have their chicken before they got depleted.

these were the things we were relying on. moving from the situation of war, danger, fear, and if you are a freedom fighter, you can also get killed. that has not been easy. but i think the most important thing is how you transit from a war situation from difficulties into moving towards peace, and that's what i'm talking about in comparison. it was time for us, the women, to work for peace and to advocate for peace and to create awareness with the women, with the communities, for them to gear towards peace. i think the beautiful part that i wanted to compare to the war background is how we created awareness with the women, with the communities for them to vote, to go into a referendum and vote for peace, for a peaceful south sudan. that is again, it's giving back. it's giving hope. it's moving from fear into

opportunity of stability and of peace. we managed to create awareness and move into the process of referendum so that they vote for their destiny, and we worked on slogans and messages that were very, very effective. some of them like your destiny is in your hands. your words count. i wish i had a t-shirt to show you the kind of slogans that were used and it was very, very effective, encouraging women to vote for their destiny. the most important bit of it again, which is my last point, is to give back. the same women, the same communities that were helping and feeding us during the war, the same communities we went back to, in their villages. these huts which are mud made,

plastered with mud, grass thatch and a difficult situation, but the most important bit in the advent of peace and security, so you know, what we say is that the same eggs we were eating from them in those days it's time for us now to give them peace. the chicken we're eating from them, it was time to give them stability, the same goats we were eating from them, it was time to give them independence, give them recognition and give them that hope that they wanted to see. i'm. pi to share this with you. >> wow, that's fabulous. [ applause ] >> i'm a freedom fighter now. >> you talk about the villages and it reminds me of the scenes

that i saw pictures of. we've worked together for a couple of years and you have shown me pictures at times pictures of you in the villages as well. i think of you as the professor and the researcher and in the village. do you have a scene from that? >> of course, we work in the areas which are hard-hit by extremism and they are of course conflict prone and conflict affected. we work in the community level to address the extremism amongst the -- i mean at that level, and while working with the communities, we came across some mothers who just thought that they should join us. those were the mothers of extremists, and while talking to these mothers, we just told them

you have to hide with your child in the hideout or your child is with the extremists. first of all, they did not trust them, talking to them like, can they trust us or not? and i think over a period of time, we built their trust with those mothers, and they started coming to us and they said yes, we would definitely want our boy to survive. we want them alive. and in this prose s one of the mothers who i think was courageous enough to take the initiative of calling me and saying that "my son has come back from the hideouts but i don't know when he will leave the house." it was 9:00 at night. i live in islamabad, and the mother was calling me from a four hours' drive from islamabad, and i said, it's

really dangerous right now, because at that time the operation was like it was just over. i said definitely i will be there with you and i will be having my breakfast with you around 8:30 in the morning. and she had to keep her son until 8:30, this is very difficult, so when i reached there, i entered her house. i sat with the four sisters, the boy, and the mother, on the floor of the kitchen. it was like a muddy house, and i sat with them on the floor. a cup of tea along with the bread was in front of us, and i was just talking to this boy. the boy was like, was shocked, because the mother did not tell her that there would be this modern lady coming from

islamab islamabad, but whenever we go to theville annuals and especially when i am facing, i'm meeting these boys for the first time, we hide our face like this and this is actually we feel that we are secure. so i just sat with him on the floor and was talking with him. he was very high and one thing i noticed in his eyes was very strange. there was so much sadness and the eyes was really blank but you could just see through them that there was something in him that was really disturbing, and then i started discussing with him, why did you join these people? are you hippy, and he was just looking at me initially very blank and he said "why are you asking me these questions? where were you when we were going through hell?

and where were you when we were, we had no food to eat?" and you know the food that i can offer you now, i could not even provide this to my family. so i said oh, you got the money for this. come to a woman like me, so the mother had to trust in me. she transmitted that trust, of course, we tried to transmit that trust through the mother to the boy, and the boy, he said he

agreed that he definitely wanted to go back to the normal life. this was the beginning of the deregulation process that we wanted to initiate in those areas, that was the first boy, we tried to help him. we tried to bring him out from that situation, tried to transform his attitude towards life as well as the way they were being convinced and the way the islamic teaching have been misinterpreted to transform them into jihadis, into societal attackers, because nowhere in the koran it says that society is, you can go for society like that. it's forbidden in islam.

similarly, jihad can actually take place in certain situations but when you ask these boys, what is meant by jihad in this state? killing of the infidel, and who is the infidel? pakistan security forces are the infidels, but why? because they are siding with those who want to harm us. it takes time to convince these people that this is not the real islam. islam means peace. it takes months and sometimes weeks and sometimes months to convince and transform the mind-set, particularly those who have gone through a lot. we were able to transform not only this boy, but this was just the beginning. and of course we are now, have placed them very well in the society. the most difficult and challenging part for us even today is the acceptance of the

community, the reintegration of these boys back in their own communities, and we had to build a better, i would say, trust with the communities so that they accept them. thank god, so far we have been able to take back 79 boys back to their communities, have placed them well, and they are working in different, i will say places, earning a decent livelihood for themselves and are really productive citizens, have become very productive citizens. >> powerful, powerful. yes, please. >> it's amazing because it gives hope that there is a possibility to make that process reversible. >> yes. >> it is inspiring, because you know, from the other side, you always deal with the radicalization, and extremism in how to cope. maybe part of coping is preventing. and doing things like you have

done, and others. this is really acting like an angel, doing -- because it is -- it gives us hope that there is not changing things not only by force. which is very important. for me. >> and to persuade and i think prevention is better than cure, so i think before everything, i mean i think we need to prevent it from happening again. >> i know that there are huge efforts among the women that are here because you represent half the women who are here for this week-long meeting that we have, and several are working on the schools and peace education, et cetera. so there are so many ways that women are working on this. i want to open it up to questions, but first i want to introduce to us all john yemma

from "the "christian science monitor."" "the christian ski"christian s"" i don't have to tell you is so well-known. i don't have to you so much about it. and conflict resolution and appreciate particularly the nobel prize. that you were willing to give that coverage. that was so explicit and powerful. you may have been the first person, the first reporter who interviewed us when we started or maybe when i came here to create the women and public policy program. do you, would you like to go to the mike and do the first question? others who would like to join, but please, i'd love to actually hear -- you've been sitting there like a reporter with your pad and your pen. i mean, do you have any reflections on what you've just heard? >> i can't think without a pen. >> yes. >> but tnk