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malaise

(268,885 posts) Sun Mar 12, 2023, 11:58 AM Mar 2023

Jimmy Carter's work for women's rights is a lasting centerpiece of his legacy - full video

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/03/08/jimmy-carters-work-for-womens-rights-lasting-centerpiece-of-his-legacy

In May 2015, a few months before his 91st birthday, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter appeared at a TED Women conference and gave a substantive 16-minute speech without notes. He landed a timely joke borrowed from a New Yorker cartoon about ex-presidents and casually mentioned the 145 countries he and his wife, Rosalynn, visited in their seven decades as public figures.

Then the tenor of his remarks became serious.

“Knowing the world as I do, I can tell you without any equivocation that the No. 1 abuse of human rights on Earth, strangely not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls,” he began, before calling out religious hypocrisy, systematic gender-based violence and misleading laws about sex work.

“Scriptures are misinterpreted to keep men in an ascendant position,” he said, later summoning women in the audience to check their husbands’ perceived superiority, because “the average man really doesn’t care. Even though they say, ‘I’m against discrimination against girls and women,’" he said, "they enjoy a privileged position.”