[ cheers and applause ] hello, georgetown. oh my goodness. hello. [ cheers and applause ] thank you all very, very much, and it is always great to be back at georgetown. i want to thank president degoia not only for those really kind remarks but for his real understanding and commitment to the issue we are here to discuss today, and that is the empowerment and participation of women and girls and in particular in the economy. before i turn to that subject i want to express my personal

feelings about the loss of dean carol lancaster. carol was a great colleague over the last years. i traveled with her, worked with her, and when i was secretary, we looked for and created a lot of partnerships with the school of foreign service and so my thoughts and prayers are with carol's family and friends and the entire university community. she would really love to have been here because she would have heartily approved of this gathering, and she was instrumental in the creation of the first ever anywhere in the world georgetown institute for women, peace, and security. so for me this is yet another wonderful opportunity to talk

about the work that georgetown is doing in partnership with so many others. and the model that georgetown is providing through the institute, which is on the brink of being replicated in other places around the world who recognize the significance of taking the subject of women, peace and security and integrating them within a world class academic institution like georgetown. one of the partners one of the new partners for the institute is the international council on women's business leadership. this is a council that i started with ambassador verveer when i served as secretary of state because we understood from the data that we were able to gather

and what we saw as the challenges confronting women here at home and around the world, that economic participation needed much more attention, and i was very pleased that so many women business leaders from around the globe were willing to join this council, and the council has now moved to establish its permanent home from the state department to georgetown, and leaders have traveled from across the world from every hemisphere, every continent, to participate, and i want particularly to thank the co-chairs, cherie blair, who is with us today, and beth brook marciniak who is traveling in asia, and of course, i am deeply grateful to my friend your fellow georgetown alum, the first ambassador for global women's issues melanne verveer,

for spearheading so much of this work. when we first convened that council at the state department in january of 2012 there may have been a few, or maybe more than a few foreign policy traditionalists thinking is it really worth a secretary of state's time to start a program on women's economic participation? is this really the kind of issue that demands sustained and high level attention? well, as i wrote about in my book "hard choices" that described the four years he was privileged to serve as secretary, the answer for me is very clearly yes because when you're in a position in the world that we have around us today, such as secretary of state, you, of course have to deal with the immediate crises, with the brewing crises with the crises over the horizon, but you also have to look for ways

of leveraging the kind of outcomes that you hope are achievable here in our country and more importantly around the world that will lead to greater peace, prosperity and progress. and, of course, there's a very compelling moral case to be made, and we should never shy away from or quit saying that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights, but there's also a pragmatic economic case that undergirds that moral imperative. i remember during the '90s as first lady traveling across africa, and everywhere i looked i saw women working. i saw them working in their fields in their market stalls carrying water, carrying firewood selling crafts. so i asked some of the economists that we were meeting with, how do you evaluate the contributions that women make to

the economy here? and i'll never forget one replied, we don't because they don't participate in the economy. now, what he meant was classic economic analysis he meant the formal economy the economy of the jobs one does in offices or factoryies factories. the work that sustained families that created opportunities for these women to gather some income in the markets or to produce enough food to feed their family with maybe a little leftover was just not counted and that got me thinking what would happen if women stopped working in the informal economy? well, i said to the economist, wouldn't your analysis mean that you wouldn't be counting what they were doing in the informal

economy, but the economy would stop? well, yes, that is a point, he said. and it is a point that we're finally beginning to grapple with because it is true that if more women have the opportunity to participate fully in the formal economy, they, their families and their communities will prosper. for example, we know that in india where women spend an average of six hours a day performing unpaid labor the gross domestic product would grow by $1.7 trillion if women participated in the formal labor force at the same level as men or even if the work they were now doing, like in those market stalls, if their activities were more respected that they would be included in the calculation

of the formal economy. now, i know there must be some economic students here and i hope you will think about this issue. how do you evaluate the work in the skaud ino-called informal economy. we want the women to move from the informal economy to the formal economy. that's what the council is focused on. but we also want in so far as it is possible to evaluate the contributions from the informal economy. now, unfortunately a new global report released just this week again confirmed that despite some small improvement, the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity remains high around the world and the consequences are significant because if we closed the gap in workforce participation between men and women around the world gdp would grow by nearly 12% by 2030.

so at the state department as we began to try to integrate women's participation opportunities and rights into our foreign policy objectives, we began to look for and ask for the creation of more data because if you present this kind of data about what it would mean for the gross domestic product of nations and regions and even of the world that is accessible and compelling, heads start nodding even among skeptical leaders in both the public and the private sectors. that's why at the clinton foundation my daughter chelsea and i are heading up an initiative called no ceilings. we are collecting and analyzing a vast amount of data to map out the gains women and girls have made in the past 20 years since the conference in beijing but also to highlight the gaps that remain.

nearly two decades after the united nations fourth world conference on women in beijing called for in the platform for action full participation in every aspect of society, a growing number of leaders have come to understand how important this is. they see we cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines or money on the table. we began rolling out our thinking behind this agenda at the conference concerning apec, the asian pacific economic community, that the united states was sponsoring in 2011. apec's san francisco declaration is an example of momentum that is building. it focused on the most serious obstacles facing women in business, access to capital access to markets skills training capacity building, and leadership. and these challenges have guided

the work of this council as well. let's look at two, access to capital and leadership. now, globally researchers estimate the financing gap for women-owned small and medium-sized businesses were the greatest acceleration of growth occurs. that's where most of the jobs not just in our country but in the world come from. that gap between financing women's businesses and men's businesses is around $285 billion. yet, we know that if more women had access to credit, more businesses would get off the ground, more jobs would be created, more revenue generated. similarly, women still face fewer opportunities to rise up the corporate ladder and hold leadership positions. only 5% of the ceos of fortune global companies are women. this is despite the fact that

it's now been very convincingly shown that when women have a seat at the corporate board table, their perspectives often improve corporate governance and performance. through our council's partnerships and our programs, we've made some encouraging progress in these areas, but we know there's more to be done. laws and regulations are still on the books in more than 100 countries that limit women's economic participation. there's a substantial gender gap in interstate connectivity and mobile use. that limits women's abilities to take advantage of new opportunities, and as our economies evolve and more women do enter the workforce, new challenges emerge. when prime minister abe was elected in japan he said one of

the best things he could do to get the japanese economy moving again would be to get more educated innovative women into the workforce. he called it women economics. i had a chance to sit down with the prime minister just a few weeks ago at the clinton global initiative in new york to talk with him about what he meant by this and what his government was trying to do about it. he spoke about the obstacles discouraging japanese women, educated women in a highly developed country from entering the workplace and the cultural shifts that are needed to break down those barriers. expanding flexibility in the workplace, access to child care and elder care would boost productivity and allow more parents, men as well as women, to work full days without stress and heartache. in japan it's especially a difficult problem because as

prime minister abe explained japanese women are primarily responsible for both child care and elder care. there are not the kind of alternatives that exist in many other societies. there's a very low rate of immigrant labor coming into the country, so there's not a workforce that can be put to work or trained to work, and so when he talks about trying to get women into the formal economy, he is opening the door to the whole debate around work/family balance and around the care that is necessary to be provided. there's nothing more important than caring for one's family members. how is that accomplished in a way that will benefit individuals, families, and the entire country? now, we face obstacles here in the united states as well. four in ten primary bread win

winners are now women yet american women still make less than men for doing the same job. a lack of flexible and predictable scheduling affordable child care paid sick leaves and paid leave we are one of the few countries without it keep too many women on the sidelines. a few weeks ago while we were in the hospital waiting for our granddaughter, little charlotte, to make her grand entrance, one of the nurses came up to me and said, thank you for fighting for paid leave, and she went on to tell me she sees families every day who struggle to balance work and parenthood. in fact, she does it herself even while she's taking care of someone else's baby, her thoughts are with her own who is watching her child. what if her child gets sick? how is she going to be in two places at once? this is the constant interior dialogue that goes on for the vast majority of women, mothers

in our country. so we know that we've made progress. the women on this council are clear evidence of that. some of the brightest minds in the world are gathered here. business leaders, diplomats head of multilateral organizations, senior government officials, issue experts and they're helping us think through how we solve these challenges, and i'll give you a great example we just heard about from our council. one of our council members from indonesia said she had done a study of markets because most of the people, 90% of the people working in markets, which is still the place where most people in the world not supermarkets but real on the ground local markets, get their food get their other goods that they need to run their households, so she did a study.

90% of the people working in the markets are women. there are no toilets available for women in the numbers that they represent. think about it. it's such a simple thing. there are certainly no child care, so is there a safe place you can leave your child while you're bustling around trying to sell in the marketplace? and maybe your hours are going to be severely restricted because there's no place to use a restroom. i recently met with my husband with the new prime minister of india, prime minister modi. he is very focused on basics like sanitation. girls, as they get older cannot go to school if there is no sanitation. women can't get very far from home because there is no toilet.

so we in this council are looking at everything from truly the most basic barriers that enable girls and women to go on to higher education enable them to be in the workforce away from their homes for some period during the day all the way to how do we get more women on corporate boards and into executive positions. we're really here today to invite the students of georgetown to help us problem solve, to think through, ideas that you might be either aware of or thinking about, and share with the institute for women, peace, and security as we continue this work. in a few minutes there will be a panel discussion with leaders from the united kingdom israel, indonesia, and the united states so we can get into more depth on some of these issues.

but this is finally on the global agenda. we've come a long way since i had those discussions back in africa in the 1990s where it just didn't register that there was a problem. women were in the informal economy, everybody knew that, but it didn't count for anything, and there was no real effort being made to open the doors to try to help more women get into the formal economy. so we need to be looking at what has worked in communities around the world. we need to scale and sustain past ideas collaborate, bring more models that have a great partnership between the public and the private sector and civil society because if you look at the data that has been generated by the world bank, by the imf, by the oecd, by private sector

analysts we in a time where the global growth rate is not yet what it needs to be it has not fully recovered from the great recession and crisis of '07, '8 '08, '09 we have made more progress comparatively in the united states but we still have millions of americans who have not recovered their incomes, who do not have job security, who are long-term unemployed. so why would we ignore at the solution that might work? and if you look at the data, and i invite you all to do that and we're going to be producing more data through the clinton foundation no ceilings initiative it's very clear that the more women we can get to participate fully and get paid equal pay for equal work the faster our economy will recover

and economies across the world likewise. the gdp projections that have been calculated, if we could get women's labor force participation to equal men's, are really staggering. in developed countries it can be 8%, 9% 10% of an increase in gdp over the next 10 20 years. in less developed countries it could be 30% to 40%. so this issue about how we create jobs in the global economy today for men and women how we really help prepare young people for the jobs that are going to be available through education and training this is going to be one of the most significant questions for public policy and for private sector decisionmakers. as those of you who are students here graduate and go out into the world of work.

we need more entrepreneurship. we need to encourage more young people to start businesses. we need more seed capital. we need more crowd funding. we need more access. we need more mentoring and teaching about business plans and how you deal with the economy and the stresses that you will face. we have a whole menu of issues that will be relevant to men and women, but if we pay some extra attention to getting women into the formal economy it will be good for everybody. we cannot get ahead in the united states or anywhere by doing what we used to do because that's not the world in which we live today. we have to unlock the potential of every person and grow the economies of every nation. it's the only way we're going to be able to grow together and create a middle class that is

dynamic and strong and creating jobs and opportunities for generations to come. with this new grandchild of ours, you know, we spend a lot of time looking at her and a lot of time thinking about what we want to do for her, and there certainly is no doubt that her parents and her grandparents and her extended family will do all that we can to make sure she has every opportunity to fulfill her own god-given potential, but we also worry about the world that she will inherit as an adult. what will be the opportunity available to her and to others in 20 to 25 years as they enter adulthood? here in our country we call it the american dream. others have different variations on that, but we've always believed that every generation by working hard can do better

than the last. we've been confident and optimistic through hard times. we've rebounded. we've shown resilience, but we need to make some adjustments. our system has to be better prepared to deal with the realities of the world we are in today. you're getting great preparation here at georgetown one of the premiere places for your education. but you should not have to be someone who goes to georgetown or in our case the granddaughter of a former president who also happened to go to georgetown. to be given the tools and to have the support of your community as well as your family. bill and i talk a lot. we came from different backgrounds, but, boy, did we have extraordinary

opportunities. he from arkansas. me from outside of chicago. and in addition to the public schools and the public parks and the stable economic opportunities that were patched together by our respective families over time, the hard work that went into that, we believed that there was this unlimited potential out there. that's what i want you to believe, but not just you, people your age not very far from here who maybe didn't finish high school, maybe are in the workforce could not dream of being in this magnificent hall, but who are part of our larger community our web of responsibility. we will do so much better if we remember that we should find a way to help everybody and this

council is looking specifically about how we help girls and women to fulfill their own economic potential. thank you all very much. [ applause ] [ applause ] >> so now to expand on what secretary clinton said about doing what every country wants to see, grow its economies create jobs ensure inclusive prosperity for its people we're going to have a conversation among four remarkable women who,

as you heard, come from four different parts of the world, and they comprise the sectors that need to work together that so-called golden tripptriangle the private sector government, and the civil society fill lan tlopy. and then we're going to open this to the students for your questions. so think about what you might want to ask them, and i'm going to ask the panelists as i introduce you if you wouldn't please come forward and take your seats. so i want to welcome back sherkck cherie blair to georgetown. cherie heads the cherie blair foundation for women. it provides women with skills network, and access to capital so they can better contribute to their economies. she's had a distinguished legal

career and is well known for her work in human rights law. today she also chairs omni strategy, a law firm, and of course, she is married to the former prime minister of the uk tony blair. cherie, happy to have you. [ applause ] anne finucane is the strategy officer for bank of america. she also leads bank of america's corporate social responsibility program, which uses the capabilities of the company and its global platform to work with a range of partners. she has repeatedly been on every list as one of the most powerful women in banking and, anne, we want to welcome you back to georgetown. [ applause ] the honorable mari pangestu is

the former minister of trade and later the minister for tourism and the creative economy in indonesia. she is a powerful leader who has been called the woman behind indonesia's economic growth. she is regarded as a well known economic expert on trade, and she's also been on the faculty of economics in the university of indonesia and is widely published as a professional economist. bear in mind that indonesia is southeast asia's most populous country and its largest economy. [ applause ] and ofra strauss is the chairperson of the board of the strauss group, an international corporation with a portfolio of five companies and thousands of employees around the world.

she, too, has been ranked repeatedly as one of the top business women in the world on lists from fortune to forbes to financial times. she is also the president of jasmine, a program that works with jewish and arab women who are engaged in small and medium-sized businesses in israel. an example of effectively combining free enterprise and social responsibility, and we welcome ofra with us food. [ applause ] >> so thank you all for being here. cherie, we heard secretary clinton just talk a bit about the importance of women's participation in the economy and certainly the role that women entrepreneurs have in starting small businesses and growing

them. their potential is largely untapped around the world. you have a foundation now that has been doing extraordinary work in training and mentoring women in entrepreneurship. give us a sense of what difference that makes and how you partner with others in a collaborative way to ensure that this work can go on. >> well, the difference, of course, it makes if you can get women, as sect clinton has said, to participate in the formal economy is vast, both for the economy itself and its growth but also for the impact it has on their families and their communities. research shows time and time again that women reinvest all the money that they make back into the home and into the wider community, so it makes good business sense to help women participate. as for the foundation what we have tried to do is to work with small and medium-sized

entrepreneurs in developing countries and in particular in africa, the middle east and asia to help them expand and grow their business partly by giving them capacity training, partly by giving them opportunities for mentoring, and particularly by harnessing the power of technology. and i think one of the ways we've done that the most successfully is by not trying to do it all ourselves but by partnering with others that's other nonprofit associations working in this area and also with the private sector and with government, and a great example of that is our mentoring platform which was highlighted, in fact, in the international council of women business leaders last report. in relation to that what we do is we team up thanks to google, we have a global mentoring platform which now operates in

55 different countries, and we've reached now nearly 1,500 women mentes and we match them with men and women mentors from across the world. so how do we find our mentes? by partnering with other organizations such as the u.s. state department and other ngos who are already working in this area and asking them do they have women on their programs who would benefit from a consistent year-long support of two hours a month over the internet from somebody who tries to help them grow and expand their business? where do we find our mentors? well, people come along and apply to join, but we also have great business partnerships. for example, the partnership that we have with anne and bank of america where bank of america at the moment i think we've got 125 mentors from bank of america, and as well as the

individual partnerships on the platform, we also support the women so that they can talk to each other. we have a network of information and advice, and we've recently entered into a great partnership with facebook where facebook has now got a special area on facebook where they're giving our women mentes training on how to use facebook to expand and grow the marketing of their businesses, but i think anne will agree that it's been very interesting to us not only to see the impact this has made on the women themselves where overwhelmingly over 99% of the women mentes in this last intake increased their confidence. 94% of them gained in their business knowledge, and 84% of them got new business opportunities because of the mentoring platform, but what was interesting in the bank of america is 100% of the bank of america mentors also found that

they grew in their own knowledge and confidence and experience of the world which i think made bank of america rather happy. but interestingly, and we heard this today, too, in the council today, often many women set up businesses, but then many of those businesses do fail, and 27% of our mentes with bank of america said that had it not been for the advice and support of their mentor, their business might have gone under. so i think there's a real need here to support women in this way, and the great thing about the internet is it means i can be sitting in london or in new york or in mumbai and i can be supporting a woman in kenya or in israel or in indonesia, and so really it's a resource for the world. >> thank you, cherie.

and you know, mentoring and training are extremely important, but i remember meeting with some young entrepreneurs whom you had worked with in a project, and they all had developed a terrific business strategy and they wanted to really start their businesses and access to capital is not so easy. and, anne, you run a very big bank or you close to run that bank. i'm wondering how can financial institutions be more creative in responding to this need? and it's not just the world over without the united states, it includes the united states as well. i remember traveling with hillary clinton once when a woman in desperation said to her, we have a terrific business plan. we know this is going to work. we've got a niche but we can't

get that first loan, and then she said the best ideas die in bank parking lots. so, anne how do we create a way to solve some of this enormous challenge? >> we certainly don't want people to die in bank parking lots so let's see if he can resurrect that a little bit. well, of course we give -- banks give -- at their best are like a financial transportation system. they should be helping economies move forward through the movement of money, and it is true that for the most part you're giving small business loans or commercial bones to people that have a track record. the real difference is when you don't have a track record, what do you do? and that would be true in the u.s. and outside the u.s. one mechanism -- there are a couple mechanism we've tried to use, and we're not alone. i think the financial services

industry is getting a little more savvy about this, and that would be through the use of cdfis. so cdfis are community development financial institutions. they don't require the same amount of history in terms of making money or a game plan but they do require sort of a hands-on approach. banks give money to cdfis. cdfis in turn give money to those that have a lower credit rating or perhaps no credit rating along with some education. so the banks are sort of fueling this. they provide a below market lending rate to the cdfis along with grant dollars. the cdfis in turn can give to these early stage very small companies from microfinance very small loans, up through $50,000, $60,000 up to

$200,000. and it can be for housing or more specifically for small business. we have done a billion dollars' worth of this kind of lending over the last several years but we haven't focused our attention on women small businesses, very small businesses swches we could have, so in the last year or two what we've done is in the u.s. taken a very specific amount of money, $10 million worth of lending, and worked with elizabeth street capital tori burch, in trying to find these women and get the movement going, and we're beginning to work with cherie outside the u.s. through the calvert foundation. again, it's a partnership. so it's not one thing. it's a bank, a nonprofit, and a third party a government sort of exercise to try to get some money flowing into these small businesses. very small businesses. >> so ofra, let's move to another kind of challenge, all

in the world of growing small and medium-sized businesses, which we know, as the secretary said, are that great accelerator of growth in economies. a couple years ago i visited the jasmine project in tel aviv, which was working to support arab and jewish small and medium-sized businesses run by women in israel. i later learned i didn't know on my first visit but i later learned that you have been instrumental in its leadership and it was a project that was, indeed, making a difference. so why did you get involved? you're a top businesswoman. why did you get involved in being so catalytic in making this project succeed, and do you think that businesswomen and others in business, because we need all the good men in this,

can contribute to the efforts of peace and security? >> well, i have a few minutes to talk about really my most important subject that i deal with which is business to talk about israel small businesses and peace. so excuse me if i will not cover all of it in three minutes. but i'll just say -- >> you can go a little longer. it's a very important topic. >> okay. but i just -- you know it starts really with the fact that i realized, like all of you, in many ways i was privileged. i was privileged to really be given the chance to be part of a great business, which my grandmother, by the way, started, and it's really -- i thought it's obvious. it's obvious that i'll get a chance. i thought it's obvious that i was asked to work really, really hard, and if i'll prove myself i'll get any job i want in the world, by the way.

and the first opportunity was here in the u.s. i was accepted to work. so it really starts with giving chance to others and to me especially, and really when i got and i became the chair for our business i thought it's obvious, it's obvious that if you work hard and if you do everything you can, you get what you thrive. the first interview i gave as a chair i was asked, how is it to be a woman in the business world? i said, what do you mean? and then i really realized when i looked at the numbers, i was the only chairperson in tel aviv in top 100 companies. so in the beginning it was really nice to be by myself really. but then i really realized it's not the case, and i really decided to use the fact that i

am influential and, yes it's not always that nice, to do -- really to help other women become part of the business world, and for us in the business world really, it's all about the bottom line. so it is a great business case, and look at the numbers and you all students here it's very easy. there are articles it's a great business case we buy so it makes sense to invest in women, but still i am involved in this issue for the last five years, and to move the needle, it is difficult because like every business that we start entrepreneurship, you need a vision, a very detailed program to make it happen. so i am on this journey. i will share with you some of my experience, and lots of it is really not yet shown in numbers. so within our business any business, there we have

expenses. one of them is really salaries or how much we pay. it's what we ask, you know, in any board meeting, and the other one is how much money we spend on buying. so on those two parts of the p and l, really we can influence not only how much we pay but who do we pay for. so how many women do we have in our workforce? i started to measure it and to really i thought if i'll just tell the organization i want 50/50 women on the management and 50/50 women in everything we do that it will move and it will happen. no, it doesn't. so it is again about education. it's about really students. it's about the next generation. it is about doing it together the whole management, men and women. so this is within the organization, and then it's about, okay, how much money we spend on procurement and buying. that's the only question i knew how to answer until i became

part of the women council, and then i learned diversity in suppliers is an issue. so it's a long question -- or a long answer to how did i get to this thing which is called small businesses, and actually when i came back from our meeting, i asked a procurement manager in our company, who do we buy from? he said what do you mean? i said okay, how many women-owned businesses how many men? he said you never asked it. i said, okay, i start to ask. actually you know what? it's about that it's about those questions. it's about -- that's what it means, that it matters but it took a year and a half to know exactly who are the owners of the businesses we buy from. that's how i actually said yes when i was asked to be the head of jasmine which is a women

owned business small, of course, most of the businesses, but what made a difference for me is that it's about jewish and arab-owned businesses. so in every country when you look at the diversity women is not one color, one shape no. it is about the same diversity. i am sure it's about the u.s. -- i know it's about the u.s. i employ here, i know it's in every country that we talk about, and i had the privilege to really run or to be the chair of an organization that speaks in three languages, arabic english, and hebrew because the women who are part of our organization don't speak one language. so inclusiveness is that. but i think all of you especially after this summer, and the news, if you open the news, it's about the war, it's about the aggression it's about all the things that we in the middle east suffer from.

jasmine is an island. we are jewish and arab women sitting together. it's about our business. it's about empowerment. it's about making money. it's about feeding the families. it's about business but it's also really talking about or looking what does it mean when we share same goals. the thing of peace, if you need an optimistic voice here, it can be done. just because i can see it really. and we have this dream that one day in every arab country you will see just means and we will collaborate because at that moment we cannot really because of the situation in the middle east. so women empowerment and women owned business is a movement. if we work together and the u.s. is a vital voice. if you ask yourself, you

americans, if it is important that you'll express your opinion, that you will influence, i can say very clearly clearly, yes democracy matters. >> thank you, ofra. [ applause ] so minister we've gone from nonprofit area to business. you've been in government for many years with portfolios that are extremely important to the economy of indonesia. how important is the partnership with government in all of this and what are some of the challenges that you had to confront in terms and indonesia still confronts because obviously this is all a continuing process but in terms of moving women from informal economy to the formal economy

and growing their role in the formal economy? >> yes. thank you. i'm very pleased to be here today to share the experiences from developing country and a policymaker's viewpoint, and to transform yourself from thinking about it and having to actually implement policy has been quite an interesting journey for me in the last ten years in government, and i have to -- i was just reflecting yesterday on where does the switch come from, but the switch came before i became minister when i was working with jeffrey sachs on the u.n. millennium goals on poverty alleviation and we were in africa, and we were talking about village empowerment and how important it was to have decisionmaking done by the village as to what the money would be used for to help the village, and it turned out that when you have the men decide

what they wanted the money to be used for they wanted it to be used for a parabol so they could watch football. the women wanted the money to be used spend three hours a day getting water. that was kind of the light switch in me and said, okay it's not just about women participation in the economy. it's actually even more basic than that. it's about the decision making from the beginning as to what the money should be allocated for. and that was an important lesson for me going in to government. as to how important it was to involve the women in the decision making. you know, you're not even talking about informal to formal. it's even more basic than that. so myself, when we went into government, we had very much that in the back of our minds. so that when we were implementing policy, when you say mainstreaming gender, it sounds so good and so easy to do on paper. but when you actually try to

implement it on the ground, it is not always that easy. so we tried very hard to think about it and we always tried to influence the men, of course, because we were still -- even though we had doubled the number of women in the cabinet at the time from two to four, and it was -- and our president susilo was very open minded. he gave important portfolios to women. i was in charge of trade and she was in charge of finance. we were relatively, as you could say, able to influence the policymaking. i will give you a few examples as to how in practice, if you actually have to think about it. secretary clinton mentioned the example of the traditional markets. as minister of trade, one of my first jobs was to revitalize traditional markets.

that is all informal sector. 90% of the traders are women. 90% of the people who shop are women. when i went into the market, i was aghast because the toilets were not designed for women. they were traditional -- you know, because it was the men who were designing the markets during the construction. and then i was seeing women working in the markets and they had babies there and they had children running around in the mess of the market. and i said this is not right. and that's when i started to introduce you have to redesign the market because it is the women who are working there, et cetera, et cetera. and then we managed to make sure that there are childcare centers, and toilets that were properly designed. and guess what? you know what the prophet centers were? the child care center and the toilets became profit centers. they pay, it's not free but a huge amount. but it's small business. so these are solutions. and in the second example, it was myself and sri when we had

to deliver the cash transfer program after the raise of the fuel price and all the empyrrhicals empirics are important, i'm a great believer in the data. it goes back to my parabolla and the water example. if you give the women the money for the cash transfer because you're talking about giving it to the poor, you are more likely it's going to be used to put food on the table and save a little bit for the education. all the empirics show that. we wanted to give the money to the women. and our president supported it. but unfortunately, because of the regulation because of the family cart, it's the men is the head of the family, we couldn't do it. eventually we started to develop programs where we could actually give the money to women. same thing with cash for work. cash for work. it was all in construction. you know. it's only for men. i said hey, come on cash for work during a crisis is not just for men. it has to be for women, too.

you can't just give it only for making roads. it has to also be for women. you have to really think about it and show the economic value for women. we used a lot of the arguments and i think we really appreciate what secretary clinton did in 2011 to put it on the table that it's about the economics. it is about the business. women have that value. it is not just about equality and human rights. it is about economics. that really helped us a lot in pushing forth the argument as a policymaker as well as including the men in the policymaking table. again, then we transformed it into the business side, including the access to capital and the micro financing where we found that women -- i will give you just one more example. i am giving you real examples of how we try to deal with the issue.

when you look at the micro our number show that only 23% of smes in indonesia are being run by women. it turns out it is because of -- and they are smaller businesses than the men-owned businesses and they have less access to capital. so there are institutional and cultural constraints. when they did the survey they asked why are women less confident to go to the banks to get a loan? one of the reasons given is, well, i am afraid i cannot pay back my loan. because the moment somebody gets sick in my family i'm the one that has to take care of that sick person. then i cannot pay my debt and i don't want to be in the position to not be able to pay my debt. so what happened was some of our banks, and it became good business, they bundled the financing package with insurance and saving because they also worry about the education.

saving enough for the education of the kids. so a number of our banks came up with micro credit that bundled the banking services with the insurance and the savings and taught the women and gave them confidence that, don't worry, if somebody falls sick there's an insurance here. and that really worked. and the government supported that in the financial inclusion agenda that we developed later on. so these are i think, real-life examples where it's not just -- we're not even talking about going from informal to formal. we're just taking care of the formal. and giving financial literacy and confidence for women to be able to just even to go into a bank, and the banks have also figured out that this is a very very psychologically they don't even -- they don't even have the confidence to enter into a nice-looking office. so they bring the banks to the

villages. you know whether it's mobile banking, or creating you know a more comfortable situation for the women to be given just the financial literacy to begin with. so those are just some of the challenges that i faced and i really look forward to working more on these issues. >> you are actually far ahead in some ways because we are starting to catch up understanding that credit and savings and insurance all matter in these propositions. we are going to go one quick round here and then open it up to questions. so be ready for that. cherie, you have made a big footprint on showing us that we've got a gender gap in mobile technology, and we have with us on the council a representative from intel. they've done a big study on the gender gap in the internet. and why is this gender gap why is it critical to close it?

what is going to happen to women in this 21st century economy if we don't address this? >> it is definitely true that knowledge is key in this. in today's world, the mobile phone in particular i think is the poor person's computer and the poor person's access to knowledge. so going back to what we just heard about in indonesia, we did a program called the business women's app, which was based -- we had it in indonesia, in tanzania and in nigeria. i'm sure there are students here from the economics department. and they will probably agree with me that sometimes the business concepts aren't necessarily natural. i met many, many women with businesses who think so long as i produce things and keep churning them out, then surely i'll have a successful business. whereas, in fact of course, it's all about as you said

ofra, the pnl, and what's the difference between capital and income. there are all sorts of concepts what do you deal with when you take on other employees. so we tried to put together using text messaging, a basic, i call it a nano mba. it's basic hints and tips for business women using the mobile phone. they get four text messages a week with some information that was worked on with local universities so it was properly specific to the information they needed to know for their countries. it was in the local language. and we have that course. we just today, thanks to the exxon mobil foundation were able to publish the results of that assessment. and it shows quite clearly that if you can give targeted information to the women like the women in the market that you were talking about, they will take that information and use it

in their business and actually turn those businesses into even more of a success, or sometimes stop them becoming a failure. and we believe that we can use that even more. what we want to do now, because that was with exxon mobil foundation and nokia, but it was only on nokia handsets. we want to take this now to business women 0.2 and actually make it more widely available. because we believe that whilst it's great for people to be able to come to university and do mbas there are a lot of people out there already doing business who haven't had access to the formal education system that we all take for granted. but that doesn't mean they can't learn and benefit from business training delivered using the poor person's computer, which is the mobile phone. so that is something that we want to see. i know the council is going to be involved in how we can work with the big companies in the

tech field to actually show how mobile can be a force for good. >> there are so many good examples today from the kind of information that can come to people who would ordinarily not get it in terms of health information, vital health information, to knowing where the market is on a given day. walking for miles and miles and miles. >> exactly. we also did a mobile app which was for rural women who were selling agricultural goods and who used to have to walk up to a day at a time to get to the wholesalers to actually get the goods. when they get there, they didn't necessarily have the ones they wanted. we transferred that through the wholesalers onto a computer in the wholesaler and mobile phones for the women sellers and they saw 200%, 300% increases in their turnover. one of the women said to me, she was a widow, she and her two children were getting one meal a day.

now they could have two meals a day and her children could go to school. so i mean this is a life transforming thing. there is so much more we can do with mobile value-added services. and that's just only starting. >> so anne, let's go to the other end of the spectrum. a lot of talk today of women on corporate boards. women bumping up against that glass ceiling in management. producing far more women with all kinds of degrees and yet, they seem stuck in some ways. i have a friend who says it's not a glass ceiling or a sticky floor. it's just a thick layer of men. so how do we and how do you at bank of america -- i know you have been very much focused on what you can do to move women within your company the kind of internal prospects. how do you do some of that and

what more do you think we need to do generally? >> i think we all have to do more, period. and that thick layer of men, we have to sort of thin out. we're in a industry that has gone through a sea change. the financial services industry. generally, when there is chaos, there is opportunity. i would say that in your personal life and i think it is true in a very large company. the women's voices at a table have made a real difference in our company in recent years. one third of our board, our board of directors, are women. half the management of the company that are vp and above are women. i do think that has made a huge difference in terms of just the conversation, let alone the progress we've made. so it isn't what was wrong with the men. it was just simply that women need to be at the table in the same way in economic terms if the women aren't in business

then we're tying one hand behind our back no matter what country you're from. so that has been a big thing for us. and the other thing is, and just having the relationship with cherie, or the vital voices or with the tory burch foundation we find our own women very enthused by this opportunity. we now have men that are participating in the cherie blair foundation, mentoring because they feel just as much satisfaction. and i think what it does is it gets everybody thinking about let's be a little more entrepreneurial. let's think a little bit more progressively. in our case, we're a huge company but we have 15 million people that mostly do their banking on mobile banking in a completely developed world. yet they have some of the very same questions about financial literacy. we did a program on financial literacy for years. i think people think it is like paint drying. they don't love it. and yes when we became a partner

with sal khan who does khan academy and does online education, and i think he's the best in the world doing this, and we interviewed our own people, let alone the marketplace, we redid everything. and we got very basic. it was in these digestible bites of, you know, before you tell me how to create a nest egg, could you just hold up the paycheck and tell me why i'm only really taking home half of what i thought i made? and when you get practical it makes a difference. and it makes the people in your company feel better about you. so it's all those things not one of those things. but i really just have to thank the nonprofits that we've worked with, because they've enlightened us. >> ofra, we talked a lot about the power of small and medium-sized businesses and it has been particularly hard for women to be able to move into the space but when they do to ensure that they can grow. give us just a quick snapshot of the state of women-owned small

and medium-sized businesses in israel. >> just to put in a different light the whole idea of small medium-sized businesses, and academic. we are here in the academy world, actually small medium-sized businesses is a measurement of entrepreneurship. so what you see actually in emerging markets or developing countries, is that usually women or small businesses open because they want to provide food to their family and kids. in developed countries -- by the way, israel is one of them -- it is actually a measurement of entrepreneurship. people open, or women, or people as a whole, open businesses because they are entrepreneurs. so really, when you think about economy, everybody talks about entrepreneurship as a

measurement or a way to grow the economy. small, medium-sized businesses are the vehicle to actually make it happen. so when i started to really look at the numbers and understand what it means and where we are on this curve, it is a different way to talk to our government about why is it so important. and when we looked at the numbers what we saw is actually the women, the amount of women-owned businesses is really very small. the other fact and figure is access to capital mentoring, women all around the world, no matter which country which state the country is we have same issues. so let's hear. so if globalization means anything for small, medium-sized businesses owned by women, one thing, issues, obstacles and opportunities are the same and we can really start to share how to really help small and

medium-sized businesses. so in israel, this is a natural because it does reflect things that are in every country, even very rich countries have within their society emerging markets. so they are the ones who are privileged and they are participating in the economy. and there are always those emerging markets. whether it's because religion that makes them at the outskirts of society or because of the color of the skin or a hundred things. so whatever it is that we share here, it's really relevant to every country. so in our own country, in my country, israel, there are jewish and arabs. so the jewish women have more access to capital than the arab women. there are a lot of reasons why, but again, most of them do not have records and really banks

and they're all here really want to see record a few years of really work. the other thing that is common to all of us, women, when they give birth, stay at home. we don't really think about the fact that if we stay at home we don't have records. so when we go to the bank, we have this gap. we didn't work for awhile. we cared for our children. the other thing is, in our country, i'm sure in every country as well, but religious women, whether we are ultra orthodox jewish women or religious muslims women or religious christian women, they have an issue of going out of the house. so small businesses are actually a great opportunity. if we say religion matters. and if we say it is part of the society. small businesses, mobile phones,

computer really allows family, much more women to participate. in israel, that's what we discovered. and as my personal experience, you know we are all trapped in the, doesn't matter if it's the neighborhood that we grew up or the university where we study, we have our, you know, we have our friends and family and if we don't reach out and look at other numbers and try to meet other cultures which is exactly what happened to me in jasmine. i really discovered that there are so many things i don't see within our society and we are a small society. so i can imagine in countries which are much larger. small businesses usually represent the whole society because it is about employing one or employing two and it's a great, great way maybe to close

or give an answer to the number one risk that the world economic forum say is a risk, which is the gap between the rich and the poor. so maybe we sit here and we talk about one of the great ways to solve one of the things that threatens actually the whole world. >> excellent. thank you. i am going to end up here after i ask mari one more question. maybe you can begin to line up. but minister you said, i found this quote, that we are not going to achieve higher growth and more equitable distribution of income without women's participation. and you went on to say we need to figure out how we can forward gender issues and mainstream them. so now you conclude decade in government. what advice do you have yourself as you go on but to all of us as

to how we close that gap? >> well i think we have to continue our, let's say, advocacy, as well as showing best practices and good examples of what works and what doesn't work. i believe in numbers. i have been using the numbers that hillary clinton started in 2011. and you know, how many -- the final effect how only 5%, i think, for the u.s., who are women in board members. even though 50% at the entry level, and then it is 5% at the ceo level and 15% at the board level. the numbers are much smaller for asia. japan is one of the lowest. i think japan is like less than 1% for ceo and 2% for board member. indonesia is actually a bit better, 5% and 8%. and those numbers i do use so you know at every level

workforce, labor participation rate for women. the number on the boards. so it's at every level. women owned businesses. these are numbers that we use. and then the numbers are important to show how much you're missing in terms of the potential of women that you are not utilizing. it is half of your human capital. we make that argument. the most important, what are the obstacles that caused this? if you start with the women on the board, why is there a funnel effect? we all know that the three constraints are the family balance, family and career balance. the second is anywhere/anytime model. for you to go up in the corporate ladder it's anywhere, anytime. you have to move tomorrow to london. you know. pack up and go. that is how you advance your career. unless the merit or performance

system is changed in that way then, you know, you cannot advance in your career. the role of technology helps, working from home. and so on. but companies have to change in the way they evaluate how they -- that it's different the way you evaluate merit and performance in women and men. that has to come from enlightenment from the men who are still running the boards, and in charge. so that's why, you know it's not just about us. you know, this is the room of the converted. the battle is out there, the unconverted, the nonconverted, the ones that have to be convinced. this is why the numbers and the examples are very important. and you know i think the numbers also show that having more women on the board gives you more profitability, better governance as the secretary said. these are numbers that we need to push to forward. i think being -- mentoring, i'm a great believer in mentoring

and role models. and give women confidence. you know whether you like or not like cheryl sandberg's "lean in" whatever model, there are different models. but you know, i think all of us who have achieved some level of success, it's upon us also to help the younger women. i'm a little bit of a role model. i didn't intend to be. but i was the first woman to come back to my country with a ph.d. in economics. i was the first woman to do this to do that. and i'm married and i have two children despite my mother telling me not to do a ph.d. because i would never get married. so you know, when women come up to me and say oh, i want to do a ph.d. but i'm afraid i'm going to be overqualified, nobody is going to want to marry me. no, no look at me you know. because this is a cultural thing. there is also a cultural thing. i think, i don't know this is across countries or not, but there's a cultural thing in my part of the world where, you

know, if a girl wants to do well, that's not so good. you know, being ambitious is not so good for a girl. it's good for a boy it's not good for a girl. these are some of the debunking of myths that we have to do. and the way we manage, also. you know we are tough like this we're considered bossy, and there's another "b" word that i won't mention here that we are often categorized but for the same behavior the men are being, oh, he's a firm leadership. he's a good leader. you know, these are some of the -- these are cultural issues which we also continue to face. but we should never give up right? and we should continue to work on the unconverted. and show by example. get the good projects, get the good examples out there. and technology, i really also all you have said i think technology is a great answer. because a lot of the informal sector in my country, it's women working from home. making handicrafts, making food whatever, you know. so e-commerce on selling online.

is a great answer for women and i would encourage all of us to work hard on that as a tool for women. >> we have some of those cultural issues here, too. okay. can you tell us your name? the school you're in and what your question is. and who it's directed to. somebody's classes must be starting. >> my name is wen jin and i'm a law student. so i'm from china. first of all thank you very much for coming down to share your perspectives. it's a wonderful talk and i really appreciate it. i have two questions. they are both addressed to miss cherie blair. my first question is is there any threshold or like qualification to the mentorship program? cherie blair foundation.

does having a business idea suffice, you know, to the program? second i think we will all agree that the women entrepreneur culture is more profound in developed country like u.s. and uk than developing countries. so is a part of the current or future strategy of the foundation to kind of cultivate the culture in developing countries to reach out to people who don't have the notion yet? thank you. >> so cherie, before you answer that i'm going to take a couple more questions. and then the panel can finish by answering whichever one is appropriate. >> hi my name is nicole, i'm a student in the sfs. my question, first of all, is to say that the five women currently sitting on the stage in front of me have achieved things that many of us could

possibly never dream of achieving. and probably never will. yet on a scale, for me, a lot of these achievements seem to be directed towards a microscale. my question for whoever one of you wishes to answer is how do you bring these achievements into a macro forum? how do you identify the flaws in government, in the financial systems, in infrastructures, that exist on a macroscale? and how do you bridge that gap, not only between gender, but between development? >> that is a wallop. okay. another one? >> thank you so much for being here. my name is shopro and i'm a senior in the school of business and i've been very involved in the georgetown entrepreneurship initiative. and i think one of the things i've learned the most is how important entrepreneurial ecosystems are to really accelerating growth and innovation.

having resources and entrepreneurs in a physical proximity, physical space really makes it easier for people to pursue those. my question is, how do you cultivate those self-sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing countries so that that sort of innovation and change can be systemic? and can come from within those countries, as opposed to maybe us thinking that we know all the answers? >> good. so cherie, quick answer from you, and then we'll go to the macro question and then the one on sustaining entrepreneurship. >> in relation to the question about who our mentes are. we aim our mentorship program to mentes who already have an existing business. we found, actually we get more progress with someone who has got a business and wants to take it to the next stage. that is not to say that we don't also have startup businesses. when we first started the

mentoring platform we did have a lot of young women in particular who were just starting their businesses. what we found, in fact, that they need the sort of ecosystem that the third question was talking about. to help them get started. whereas the mentoring was actually much more helpful to women who had already started on their business journey. got to a stage where they weren't quite sure where next. when we are looking for mentors, we are looking for people of seven years experience. we don't want the ceo to be the mentor because their experience is so remote in some ways. but we are looking like those people in the bank of america who are on their journey if you like, to becoming the ceo but still have a lot of practical, hands-on experience. i did want to say something about ecosystems. because we have an enterprise development program. we have done a lot in israel, in lebanon. we are about to take it to the

uae. where we do intensive we do general business training and then we take a smaller group, and do coaching for those businesses, and then finally we take a smaller group again and over a year give them business incubation and support. for example in lebanon we did our first project there with 60 -- 40 women, we managed to create over that year 60 new jobs. i think ecosystems are important. i think you have a point about that. how do we encourage entrepreneurship? i'm not sure that the developing world is not full of entrepreneurs. i think it is full of entrepreneurs it's just often it's not acknowledged that what the market women are doing what the people in the informal economy, what the woman who is baking cakes not just for herself, but for her neighbors and her friends, or the hairdresser, they actually are entrepreneurs as no one's ever told them that that's what they do. and no one has ever helped them

to be able to see that actually they could do that not just for the people they know but for a wider community, which is why the facebook opportunity, which helps women to use facebook to get friends virtually who then become their customers has been such a success. >> so i'll try to take a brief explanation on the macro. first of all, macro i think that there is a sea change that has happened over the last couple of years. where transparency is so much more in the forefront of business, government, nonprofits. it isn't that you like everything you see, but you're going to see it all. once you see it all it allows you to i think, reorder things. so whether that is in any walk of life, because of social media, because the world has become less institutional, i think more human, and i don't mean that in a soft way, i mean

that individuals have a larger voice, whether you're looking at the arab spring, or you're looking at what happened with the financial services industry, or you look at any kind of investigation that's going on, transpairen is so much more prominent. more people are at the table. and there's very little you can't do that something isn't going to be out there. i'm not saying that can't happen. but that's a huge difference. the second thing and you were saying so how do you scale these ideas. there is nothing that happens, you don't begin anything on a big scale. you beta it. in the largest companies so we're a large company, you beta something. you see how it's going to go. you test it. you test and learn. and then you expand it. all the things we're talking about here today, whether it's mari or ofra or chevie or myself, each of us will take something away and apply it. because that's how businesses go, small and large. you don't -- you don't just

arrive on the stage doing something big. you begin in a small way. and you work it if it works, then you develop it more. so i mean i would say both of those things. and the last thing, i would expect all the people in this room to achieve whatever we've achieved and more. that is sort of a given. that is the hope of everybody. the next generation is bigger and better than we are. >> before i turn to ofra and mari for last comments i'm going to take one more. i'm sorry. and they can factor it in to their answer. >> my name is anna. i'm a senior in the school of business. i read recently of a study in a bloomberg article that nine out of ten women polled on wall street were -- said that they

believe that their male counterparts earned a higher wage. now women in positions of incredible influence, what reasons do you see for this persisting wage differential between women and men? and what are some actionable solutions that you would propose to combat this iniquity? >> quickly, i think the first thing is, if you think that's happening, ask. be bold. second thing is i think that -- i can't speak for every industry, but because of the way of the world in human resources, as a woman that's in a position that would be looking at what the other men -- the other people are making and men, you ask, you check, and you have human resources verify for you. so that you're not wondering. you know. and once you know, it will change.

>> we are the result of the last hundred years. if you look at the next hundred years, there is more data. it's much more of an issue. everybody talks about it. i just give you the world economic forum. it seems to be the small rooms where women issues were talk. now it's mainly on the main stage. the gap between men and women, the access to whether it's capital, education, it's measured. so there is much more data, which means there's much more to be done. so i think that you, the young people who study now have much more women, okay. have much more opportunities than our generation had. because, everyone talks about it. the numbers are there. even kind of punishment of not doing the right thing is there.

on a positive and very optimist optimistic look to the future, i think at least of those things like measurement, understanding that it is the right ethical thing, that it is about a moral thing, that it is about the business case, it's all there. so i think things will be better if we'll all just make the right effort to really ask for them, insist on them. the men will join us. at the end. so if it felt that we are unique, yes we are unique because the last hundred years it was less of an issue. now you hear the next generation of presidents ministers, actually talk about those things, when they run for their seats. at the top of this world.

so i think it will be easier for you girls and women in the next 100 years. >> i think we are way ahead compared to 100 years ago or even 20 years ago, when the study in our universities were showing that girls were underperforming academically. because they didn't want to lose out getting a boyfriend. this is empirically shown in our case. and then 20 years later they are not underperforming academically no more. and we have found that 60%, 70% of the girls are getting the better grades than the boys et cetera et cetera. so they don't worry about that. so we are advancing. but i think the battle is still out there. i believe in the economic argument very much, that that's the one that's going to win the

battle. that it's -- women are the economic drivers. it makes economic sense. it makes business sense. therefore, right from birth all the way to when they are corporate leaders, we have to make sure that they are the -- whether it's a policy regulation that has to be changed, an institution that has to be changed, or cultural mind-set has to be changed, all the way, so from birth you know zero to five nutrition and health, access to education, equal access to education. it's about building the human capital. all the way to job opportunities and access to capital. these are all the stops that we have to continue to advocate, and make the policy changes. make the advocacy. make the changes and it's not just women who will make it. it has to be the men. there is a huge education out there that we need to do. and i'm sure that all of us in this room, and the younger generation will be continuing to

do this together. thank you. >> those are perfect last words. the journey continues. before we all thank our panelists i want to thank the council members who are still here. i know airplane schedules have intervened for some. i want to thank the women ambassadors who are here. i just noticed so many of you are here. [ applause ] it's wonderful to have you. i want to thing continue marin for coming. she spent more than a decade in prison in myanmar burma and now is running her own ngos to move myanmar forward. so thank you zinmar. and claudia sitting next to her is the former attorney general of guatemala. and because of her they've made great progress in terms of justice in that country. so to all of the women leaders

here, to all the inspiration here, to all of you who are going to take over, we wish you well, and the council has a lot of work to do. but final thanks to our extraordinary panel. [ applause ])zrx and we're live on capitol hill this morning as the house rules committee of the 114th congress is gathering today for an organizational meeting. and to start setting debate rules for upcoming bills for the current house session. we're expecting a bit of procedural business and a moment to set up operating guidelines,

as they sit for the very first time today. and then we expect work to get under way on the keystone xl pipeline and a jobs bill. both are listed as early priorities by the house republican leadership. we expect work on the pipeline bill to be brought to the house floor for debate later this week. a senate committee by the way, is also preparing legislation on the key stone xl pipeline and president obama already has indicated that he will veto that legislation if it does reach his desk. this is live coverage of the house rules committee set to get under way shortly here on c-span3.

again, waiting for the house rules committee to get under way this morning. still waiting for a few members to arrive. until they get things started here, should also let you know that we expect a little bit of housekeeping work to take place before they get under way with work on the keystone xl pipeline and the jobs bill. again both of those listed as priorities by the house republican leaders. work on the pipeline bill

expected to be brought to the house floor for debate later this week. we also could see the senate take up keystone xl pipeline legislation. and we do expect the president to veto that bill if it does come to his desk.

while we wait for the house rules committee to debate some of the rules for pending legislation, we'll look at some of the ceremonial swearing-in event yesterday with house speaker john boehner, and members of congress. >> congratulations.

>> right hand up. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> nice to see you. >> nice to see you. nice to see you. great, thanks. great job. great job. very nice. thank you. thanks.

rules committee will come to order. and thank you very much. i'm delighted that we're gathered together in a brand-new year with a new opportunity ahead of us. we've had a chance to welcome each other. we have two new members. doug and steve. welcome to the rules committee. my first time, i don't know about yours louise but i wasn't two chairs in. >> i sat last chair for a good while. >> me, too. and you know, you got to make -- it's like being in the gunner's seat. every time somebody moves in and out you got to move up and back. but keeps you alert and awake. well, we're delighted, as we begin this new process, to get started. the committee now is in order and we're here for the adoption of committee rules and other business related to the organization of the committee for the 114th congress. also recognize that we have our chaplain with us today. i've asked the chaplain -- no i

don't think it's trouble. but that grin on his face, i asked him if he would pray for us and he said no i'm here to pray for you. and that's an old term from years ago, but he is here to pray, i think, for all of us, father. father, we're delighted that you're here, and i noticed that he sits at the right hand of me, not me at the right hand of the father, but here we go, and i'm delighted that we're here today. i want to let us know that i am hopeful that this committee, while we have some new members, will recognize that what we're attempting toç51q÷ accomplish is the people's business. we are here to make sure that what we do that we try and be forthright about, that we try and look each other in the eye. i recognize, i have a job, and i

know the gentle woman from new york has a job. we represent, perhaps two ideas two different ways of getting things done. she is a democrat, and i am a republican. but we have an obligation to work also in the best interest of the american people. we have an obligation to listen to people back home. we have an obligation to speak forthrightly about that which we represent and i believe we have an obligation to the institution. we have an obligation to make sure that we are speaking with each other with clarity, but also as with congeniality. as colleagues. this committee, not unlike the others, but perhaps more so, is on 24-hour call. we have to be available to move the house. we're institutionallists.

we're people that understand what we're doing matters, and that a lot of people are looking to us for guidance and to move forward. there have been a number of comments which we will take up later about how we talk to each other. how we address our witnesses, time frames and moving through to get our work done. but today is not for that. today is an opportunity for us to formally put in place the committee, make sure that we understand and are listening to each other and moving forward, and that is my opening statement. i'd like to yield to the gentle woman from new york, the ranking member for any comments she'd like to make. the gentle woman is recognized. >> thank you. i appreciate that very much, mr. chairman. before i begin i want to say that both you and i are blessed with incredible staffs. we have great affection from yours, as i'm sure you do from mine. and staff works extremely hard. so we're glad to be back under the tutelage of miles and you.

they really great some great work done and we thank you for that. i also want to take a moment to say that while i look forward always to the beginning of a new term, full of promise and hope, and we want to welcome our new members from the majority. it's nice to have them, and for everybody who has moved up here a bit, too, we were just saying it took us a long time to jump those many seats, so just congratulations on that. we've got a rich history here on this rules committee. we on the minority side welcome all of you, we're eager to join to the in the legislative process. now every two years we have an opportunity to start anew, with a new congress and this committee, as the chairman has said paylays an integral part in the process of what happens in the house of representatives. so before we begin i've got to get this out of the way. i want to mention two numbers to

my colleagues. the numbers 83 and 97. now 83 is the number of closed rules the committee approved in the last congress. which shut almost all of us out. that's the most closed rules of any congress in history. that means that most members don't even get to participate in the process of congress that harms our institution, and our country. let me give you a sense of the magnitude of that number. in 2013, this committee approved more closed rules in a single week than the entire final year under democrat control. so let me say that again. more closed rules in one week than an entire year under democrat control. we want to have better opportunity to work than that. we can do better, and we don't have to repeat that record. we can start anew. the second number is 97.

that's the percentage of waivers that this committee granted to republicans in the last congress. 97. of the 181 times a committee allowed a member to violate the rules, 97% of them were republican members. let me put it another way, in the last congress democrats had to abide by the rules, republicans didn't. it shouldn't be that way and it doesn't have to be that way. we can do better. now there are two new empty chairs at the end of the dais. i might say that i have great respect and affection for our two colleagues who are no longer there and i wish them well in their new committee assignments. and we're all looking forward, as i said before to working with the new members, and certainly with the chair. and it's my fervent hope that the new congress will bring back an era of willingness to tackle big problems that face our nation. a renewed call for true

bipartisanship. a culture of enlivened debate, in no other committee will we see so clearly the fruits of those changes. i hope we can join together to prioritize the american people and set partisanship aside. and so with those words, i say i'm happy to be back. happy to see all of my colleagues. and hope for a wonderful term. and my best to you mr. chair. >> miss slaughter thank you very much. we will not only accept your feedback, but recognize that we all need to work including myself, that i need to make sure that i am down at your office speaking with you, that i'm forthright about what we're going to do and how we're going to do things, and the gentle woman knows, up to and including an opportunity for us to try and look at the same problems that we've got to accomplish together. >> what i most want is for us to be able to participate fully as

duly elected members from our districts. to be able to speak for the people that we represent, and to have input on the legislation. >> yes ma'am. >> and i really look forward to doing that and we will certainly do our part. >> yes ma'am. >> on this side we are committed to it. >> yes, ma'am. it's my hope, and you know, we're all in different circumstances, but that the american people have now made a decision about who will run the senate. and i view that for this -- for us to be seen well the house by the american people, it -- a lot of people probably in sixth, seventh or eighth grade ninth grade, take a history class. and they learn the house does something, and the senate does something, doesn't have to be the same and then they get together for a conference, but they're willing to tackle the biggest issues. willing to tackle them. even if it's a vote that goes

the wrong way to a person, and when we have 350 pieces of legislation that ended up in the senate without a up in the senate without a return, it created a circumstance for the american people and up here, perhaps different for you than for us. but it created some things that i hope this time i can look at you honestly and tell you i think we will be able to work better on our side so we can get our work to the senate. it's just as you said, a new time. >> and we want to take advantage of this. on the way over i was happy to see 12 little children from a day care center at the smithsonian. and looking at those faces they're so excited to be here. it does renew our commitment to do our best.

>> that and we have some -- i don't know the exact numbers -- some 57 new members of congress who come in here with the expectation of performance. and they look to this committee, among others to be able to effectively allow them to have debate too. so i think -- i think we're starting out well. >> all right. thank you. >> he even said he was looking forward to this year. >> oh, he's always looking forward. he's our cheerful one. [ laughter ] >> we love that good cheer. our first order of business is the adoption of the committee rules for the 114th congress. the chair will be in receipt of a motion from the gentlewoman from north carolina, the vice chairwoman of the committee, mrs. fox. gentle lady is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i move the rules committee adopt the proposed committee rules for

the 114th congress. >> the proposed changes include consistent with -- an update to the truth and testimony requirements for nongovernment tam witnesses to include payments or contracts from foreign governments in required disclosure. and one change that conforms to the long standing committee practice and additional technical changes. so without objection, proposed rules will be considered as read and open for amendment. is there any discussion or amendment? gentleman from massachusetts recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have a couple of amendments. my first amendment is designated number one. and this amendment would simply require us to tell the public how many emergency meetings we've held and how many times we've used a closed rule to block all members from offering amendments so far this congress. last congress was the most closed congress in history. and i think we have to do

better. i know people on your side think we ought to do better. since we keep he's records anyway, why not make the tally of closed rules available to the public as we go along? over one-third of our meetings were emergencies last congress. here's just one example of legislation so essential and time sensitive that apparently we couldn't wait one or two more days to hold a nonemergency meeting, amending the federal act. i don't think that that necessarily -- i don't think that raised to the level of an emergency. i think what we're just hoping is that maybe, with some more transparency, and with reporting requirement that maybe some of my friends might think twice before we rush into emergency meetings and before we move head long with more and more closed rules. so i would urge the committee to adopt this amendment, and i urge an aye vote. >> i appreciate the discussion,

gentleman gentleman's amendment is open for discussion. gentleman from oklahoma is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as i understand it, we already keep these records. we notify everybody when we have an emergency meeting. it's on our website. the rules are designated, whether or not they're closed. we all know that both sides keep track of this. as my friend from new york pointed out. we all have very capable and expert staffs here. so the information is available and frankly, my friends you know, quite often in legitimately, no problem pointing this out i don't think anybody on our side has ever said their information is inaccurate. i know it's not. i think their staff is again very proficient in providing it. so to me it's just sort of make work. i don't see the purpose behind it with all do respect to my friend from massachusetts. >> i appreciate the comment. it's not always easy for the public who are following to be able to figure out how many closeded how many

emergency meetings we've had, and i don't see how it's make work. it's basically adding numbers. i mean how hard is it to keep a tally say we're on 83rd closed rule or 5 # 2nd emergency meeting. we're not asking you to do extensive reserge. but i think it's an attempt to highlight the fact, and this applies no matter who is in charge. it's an attempt to try to remind those in control of the house the direction in which they are taking this house. and you know, i just think that, you know again i go back to when speaker boehner became speaker and promised the most open, transparent congress in history and in fact, we got the opposite. and i think that maybe if we are compelled to remind ourselves every meeting we have a running tally, maybe might think twice. >> reclaiming in my time, to my

friend's point we can all recite a litany of things promised or said that sometimes don't happen. my friends ended for a year or two years the process of open rules on appropriations. didn't bring the bill to the floor. didn't bring open rules to the floor, which we've done multiple times. i don't think we ever brought a close other than the branch that we both agreed to close and negotiate the amendments on both sides. so again, the information is available, i see no need for it. if my friends want to make that point, they're certainly free to do so. i never found them in error when they make it. i fail to see the reason to do work which is essentially duplicate. yield back. >> chairman yields back his time. i will weigh in on this also. i will tell you that i don't know that this is exactly hits the the point, but we all live

in glass houses. the majority whether it is speaker boehner or speaker pelosi or whether it's mrs. slaughter as chairman of the committee or david dreier or pete sessions, we all have business that has to be done. and i don't think there's any attempt to try to hide or information when we say we have an emergency meeting. it says it on the the notice. we have an emergency meeting. but let's retort back with also facts under speaker pelosi and chairwoman slaughter in the 111th congress, the rules committee held 67 emergency meetings. 67. they did happen. and they do happen. and it's a mearpt of the course of the business that we have up here. and 12 instances where emergency measures were added to a

regularly scheduled meeting. that's because new work had to be done. in the 113th i called 27 emergency meetings, and we considered seven items as additional emergency measures. that means that what we did is when we added something new we had to use that designation. but many of the times it was about normal and regular types of activities. . so i just want us to understand that there may be a sixth-grade class that's listening out there and think oh my gosh, this guy, pete sessions is doing things way different than tradition. o forthrightly i accept what you're saying, but counter back, some counter balance. that's also part of the nature of the beast. >> well, with respect, i think what we're trying to do is change the nature of the business.

i think there's a lot of members on both sides who would like a more open process. and with the record number of closed rules, they're not able to do that. this would apply to the the democrats if they're in control. i understand business as usual is, but we're trying to argue for is you know, a different kind of business as usual. one that is more inclusive and one that embraces a more deliberative process. i would urge my colleagues to vote yet on this amendment. >> thank you very much and one additional comment. business as usual is not what i referred to. what i referred to is the needs of the business. and sometimes the needs of the business take differently. i think we have further discussion.

signify by saying aye. those who have no? noes have it. noes have it. the gentlewoman asked for a recorded vote. >> miss fox? >> no. >> miss fox, no. >> mr. cole no. mr. burgess. mr. burgess no. mr. collins. mr. collins no. miss slaughter? >> aye. >> miss slaughter, aye. mr. hastings. mr. hastings aye. mr. chairman? >> mr. chairman, no. >> four ayes seven nays. >> further discussion. >> i have one designated amendment number two. my amendment says if we're going to let so many members break the rules of the the house. we soub transparent about how often you do it.