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Amanpour
Marking International Women's Day
Aired March 08, 2013 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to a very special edition of the program, a celebration of International Women's Day and of the women who fight to change our world every day.
The most powerful voice this year must belong not to a woman, but to a young girl, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, who spent years fighting the Taliban for the basic right of girls everywhere: to be educated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MALALA YOUSAFZAI, EDUCATION ACTIVIST: When I looked at my -- at my people and my school fellows and the ban on the girls' education and the -- and the Taliban, so I thought that I must stand up for my rights, the right of education, the right for peace. So I did it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And for that, the Taliban shot her in the head just a few months ago. But she's made an amazing recovery and she has not been silent. Now, she says, "This is a second life. And I want to serve. I want every girl, every child, to be educated."
And Malala is in good company. Women everywhere are fighting for their rights each day and many of them have appeared on this program. So on International Women's Day, we want to look back at some of the conversations we've had with the remarkable women who are changing our world.
And we begin with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel prize laureate, political leader and a bona fide icon of democracy in Burma, her own home, and around the world. I spoke with her in New York this past fall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Aung San Suu Kyi, thank you for joining me.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI, BURMESE ACTIVIST: It's a pleasure.
AMANPOUR: What do you think is your greatest achievement? If you had to sum it up, what would you say has brought you these, Congressional Gold Medal, the Nobel prize?
SUU KYI: I don't think it's yet time to say what my greatest achievement is. I think I have received these prizes for the efforts I've made to reach the goal that all my country men and women would like to reach.
AMANPOUR: Do you remember what it was like that time, when you faced the soldiers and their rifles pointed at you, when you walked straight towards them?
SUU KYI: Ah, that was a long time back.
AMANPOUR: Do you remember it?
SUU KYI: Yes. Of course.
AMANPOUR: What went through your mind? People held back, but you didn't. You walked straight towards them.
SUU KYI: Well, I wasn't given much choice because. first of all, they said, you must all move to the side of the street. So I said, fine. So I said let's walk on the side of the street. And then he said something like that he would shoot whether or not we were on the side of the street or on the street itself. And I decided I might as well be on the street.
AMANPOUR: The fact that they didn't, what did that tell you?
SUU KYI: Well, a major came running up. He had been walking behind us, and he came running up and stopped the man who was in charge, who I think was a captain.
AMANPOUR: And then there was another major attempt on your life in 2003. Many, many people were killed. How did you keep going after that?
SUU KYI: Well, how could I not keep going after that? One has to keep going, especially because of incidents like that.
AMANPOUR: You're now working with the former general; Thein Sein is now the president of your country. These are the people who prevented you from seeing your husband, who kept your children separated from you, not to mention the oppression in your country itself.
Tell me what it is like to now have to be a politician and work with this group of people.
SUU KYI: I've never thought that what they did to me was personal anyway. It is politics. And if you decide to go into politics, you have to be prepared to put up with this kind of -- with these kind of problems. I like a lot of the generals. I'm rather inclined to liking people.
AMANPOUR: That would sound pretty dramatic for people to hear, that you like the generals.
SUU KYI: Well, I've always got on with people in the army. You mustn't forget that my father was the founder of the Burmese army. And this is why I have a soft spot for them, even though I don't like what they do. That's different from not liking them.
AMANPOUR: I'm stunned.
SUU KYI: Are you really?
AMANPOUR: Yes. I'm stunned.
SUU KYI: I think it's perfectly natural for me to feel this way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: An amazing women, but too many headlines from another country, the Rainbow Nation of South Africa, show women as targets for rape and violence at all levels of society.
There's the fatal shooting of Reva Steenkamp by her boyfriend, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius. But before that, the systematic assault on women was epitomized by the brutal attack on a 17-year-old girl, Anene Booysen at a construction site just two hours from Cape Town.
Lindiwe Mazibuko is a South African member of parliament and one of the loudest voices in support of women's rights. I spoke to her from Cape Town in February and I asked her if the angry response to Booysen's murder could be the start of a bigger cultural change.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDIWE MAZIBUKO, MP, SOUTH AFRICA: I believe that this can be a watershed moment. I believe it's up to South African society, political leaders, the government and those in the criminal justice system to decide whether or not this will be a watershed moment.
We've heard comparisons with what happened in India, where another young woman was gang raped on public transport. And a lot of people have made the comparison between India and South Africa and asked why is it such a casually acknowledged part of South African life, that women must be regularly victimized in this way.
So I hope very much that this will be a watershed moment. But the outrage isn't enough. It has to -- it has to translate into action.
AMANPOUR: Let me play you something -- our reporter in South Africa, Nkepile Mabuse, spoke with a man who raped a woman decades ago and recently he sought her out to apologize.
Listen to him explain why he committed the rape -- and he seemed to sort of portray it as part of the culture.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DUMISANI REBOMBO, GENDER EQUALITY ACTIVIST: I had pressure to go on. This seen as one of the voices at the time. So I did it.
NKEPILE MABUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How did you feel? Obviously she was screaming.
REBOMBO: Terrible. Terrible. And I felt so guilty. See, I'm scared if my mother would find out, my father would find out. No thought about how the victim was feeling at all.
MABUSE: Why? Why do think that was the case?
REBOMBO: It's because when the environment accepts that behavior as the norm, it's -- you don't pay too much attention to it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Wow, I mean, that's at once really incredible to hear and very open, admitting that the environment pretty much allows this, if not outright condones it.
MAZIBUKO: We need to deal with the fact that we live in a society where there is an unequal relationship between men and women to the extent, as this man has just described, that men feel like women are possessions with which they can do whatever they like.
And it starts in seemingly small ways, with a young girl having her leg grabbed by a taxi driver, having her buttocks tapped by a school teacher. And it accelerates to sexual harassment in the workplace and so on and so forth, until women are being assaulted by men in public and people stand by or look away and don't actually stand up and do something about it.
So there's something broken in our society, and I know it's a consequence of apartheid; it's a consequence of our difficult past. But we haven't done enough to look it in the eyes and say, this is what South Africa is like.
And unless we're willing to tackle these problems, we're going to continue to have to deal with the symptoms, which is the violent crime.
Young men who feel emasculated in a country where they can't work, where they can't feel like they are validated by some kind of economic activity, become susceptible to a situation where a woman becomes a punching bag for them to take out their frustrations on. So there's a whole dialogue that needs to take place.
But the first thing that needs to happen is we need to look ourselves in the eye and say we are actually not where we thought we'd be 18 years into democracy. Things are actually not where they should be and we need to do something about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And on that note, here's a bit of positive news from the United States. On Thursday, the Violence against Women Act was signed by President Obama. The law protects women against such crimes as domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking. And it passed, despite some initial resistance in Congress.
We turn now to Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund and so one of the most powerful women in the world. I asked Lagarde about the first female German chancellor, Angela Merkel, target of much criticism for her tough stance during the Eurozone crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Do you think if Angela Merkel wasn't a woman, she would get this amount of pushback?
CHRISTINE LAGARDE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: No. I think it -- well, I think she's a very strong leader. She's a very courageous woman. She's always very keen to understand fully the situation and I think she has a very solid sense of balance, you know. It's a give- and-take process. It's a two-way street.
And, you know, what's in it for her, for Germany, what's in it for others and how do we balance out the situation?
AMANPOUR: But you think she wouldn't be under such global attack if she wasn't a woman?
LAGARDE: Hmm. Well, Germany is Germany and the economic forces are the same. But I think that there is a slight tendency to actually maybe overdramatize, and maybe the media participate in the process, the pressure under which she is. And it's, you know, surprisingly, and very practically, a male-dominated world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And as Lagarde and all of us know, we were pleased to find out first-hand that remarkable women start out as remarkable girls. And we were thrilled to have these two aspiring young musicians, members of the Afghan Youth Orchestra, right here in our studio.
Their music was banned by the Taliban. But now it's having a comeback in Afghanistan. And last month these young girls and their fellow musicians performed as New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall. We'll be right back.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to our special celebration of International Women's Day, and of the women who fight to change our world every day.
Ameerah al-Taweel is married to one of the richest men in the world. He's a Saudi prince to boot. But she is more than a privileged princess. In a country that's among the most oppressive for women anywhere in the world, the princess is saying things that the clerics and members of the monarchy in painfully conservative Saudi Arabia really don't want to hear.
I asked her about one of the most basic of challenges to her rights. Why can't Saudi women drive?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMEERAH AL-TAWEEL, SAUDI PRINCESS: It's definitely a question that I've been asked a lot. I don't know why. It's -- I think it's a very easy decision. And it is up before the government. A lot of people are saying this is a social issue. Not many political issues are right of -- you know, 40 percent of the Saudi society are females. And you're taking their right to drive, saying it's a social issue.
Well, education was a social issue. And a lot of people in Saudi Arabia were against women getting educated. Yet the decision was made. And among five years, we see a lot of Saudi women are -- were -- in the `70s, of course, were into -- plugged into education and now you're talking about 57 percent of university graduates are women.
AMANPOUR: They are --
AL-TAWEEL: And it's very impressive and it does need leadership and it needs a decision taken by the officials in my country.
AMANPOUR: And do you think that they should take that decision?
AL-TAWEEL: Of course.
AMANPOUR: Do you think it's time for reform? Can reform happen in Saudi Arabia, because what we're told is everything has to move so slowly because, you know, the clerics are so powerful and the waves of conservatism is so powerful.
AL-TAWEEL: Conservatives have an amazing lobby. They know how to voice out their opinions; us women, not yet. If they are against something, they write op-eds at the same time; they use social media at the same time. They walk into official offices of the government at the same time. And they state their opinions.
Now for us women, yes, we are very educated. We know exactly what we want, but we're not organized.
AMANPOUR: Why not? Why don't people write op-eds? I mean, look, you just said 57 percent of college graduates are women. Only 15 percent, though, of the workforce is women. So they haven't got in there. But there are some very powerful women in Saudi Arabia.
Why are people shy to write the op-eds and to organize, even that 15 percent?
AL-TAWEEL: There are a lot of women who are doing so. But the problem is it's not uniting together and doing it at the same time.
And we're trying to do so with the foundation. We're creating the First Women Leaders Network in Saudi Arabia, where you have women leaders from different sectors. And they get together; they set priorities and they set how to tackle these priorities and reach their voices to the right people. And this is a step that I think will create a positive change. (END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: From the debilitating challenges that Saudi women find in their everyday life, we turn again to the attacks and the violence against women elsewhere in the world.
We spoke earlier of the brutal rape and the death of 17-year-old Anene Booysen in South Africa. Tragically, though, South Africa is not the only country where violence against women is endemic.
In India, after the rape and death of a young student, anger at what many call institutional misogyny there boiled over and mobilized the nation.
Kiran Bedi was the highest ranking female officer ever in the Indian police force. And I spoke to her after the rape. And she told me there must be accountability.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIRAN BEDI, FORMER INDIAN POLICE CHIEF TURNED CORRUPTION ACTIVIST: Well, I think the December 16th gang rape will change -- will change; they can't get -- they can't be as they were. It could be -- it can't be business as usual anymore in policing.
AMANPOUR: And how surprised do you think the government was, the system, the police, when the people of India really rose up and demonstrated and continue to demonstrate after this gang rape that left this poor woman dead December 16th?
How surprised was the establishment?
BEDI: It took them out of their security and brought them out of their comfort zones. I think they were feeling -- they were -- they were in this, very comfortable in this, around their own security guards and the gated communities and the law and order of being politically directed sometimes to be dispersed.
So I think they got shaken up. And they almost felt threatened that the nation was, the people were up in arms as a civil society, up in arms and their -- they walked back (ph). I think they got shaken up.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, how high a price did you pay for trying to fight this kind of crime?
BEDI: The price I paid was that I never was made the Delhi police commissioner where I had the rank and the seniority and the merit. Someone two years junior to me got that position. That's the price I paid.
AMANPOUR: Probably the price you paid for being a woman as well, would you say?
BEDI: Well, I was different. I wasn't one of the old boys' club. I wasn't a part of their boys' club. I was different.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Ordinary women in India are fighting back against this pervasive harassment and assault. And they're using their smartphones as their weapon of choice. New software lets them anonymously report incidents of abuse and violence, which are added to an online map of trouble spots, a collective action that Indian women call pinning the creeps.
And now we turn to the epic changes happening in the Catholic Church, where preparations are underway to elect a new pope.
And while many Catholics, according to polls, are leaving their faith because they're angry at the abuse and corruption in the church hierarchy, one woman has chosen to stay and fight from within.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is senior writer for salon.com, where she wrote a personal essay called, "No Matter What, I Am Still a Catholic."
I asked her what keeps her in the church.
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, SALON.COM: I still philosophically believe in the groundwork of Catholicism. I believe in the virtues of simplicity and forgiveness and tolerance and inclusion that were taught to me as a child and what I try to teach to my children as well.
But the main thing is, I think that, to be questioning and to call out hypocrisy and to eliminate injustice when you see is about as Christlike as you can get. So for me, I feel the work of those of us who still believe in the faith of Catholicism is for us to do what Christ would do, which is to make a lot of noise and roar and make trouble. That's what I think we're supposed to be doing right now.
AMANPOUR: Do you think, given all your studies, all your writing, all your academic work on this issue, that there is a chance that women might see themselves priests and treated as equal citizens in the church?
WILLIAMS: I think -- I think women priests are still a long way away. But I can tell you that when I was a little girl, I had to fight and I lost the fight just to become an altar server. And when I now go to my church and I see girls up there on the altar, that, to me, represents an understanding and a little bit of progress.
And I think that what we see in parishes across the world, certainly I see in my own parish, is so different from what we hear coming out of Rome.
And what I would love to see in the future is more of a connection and more of a consistency between the work that Catholics are doing on the ground, who really care about these progressive issues, who really care about poverty, who really care about equality, who really care about family in real ways and what we hear coming out of Rome that is just this very strict, very dogmatic and very backward looking world view.
We live in a different world now, and I think that the church has revised itself philosophically in the past. There's no reason that it can't revise itself philosophically in the future and take an attitude that's just more encompassing. That, to me, is what being Christlike is supposed to be about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: From the Vatican to India, Afghanistan, South Africa and everywhere, female movers and shakers can be found in every corner of the globe, and sometimes they even walk into our own CNN newsroom.
Angelique Kidjo, the Grammy award-winning singer and political activist was here on behalf of UNICEF when she burst spontaneously into song.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANGELIQUE KIDJO, SINGER AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST: (Singing).
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AMANPOUR: And finally, we began our tribute to International Women's Day with the courageous and determined Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan. And we'd like to conclude this program with another brave woman, former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was also shot in the head and is also speaking out.
She was attacked by a crazed gunman two years ago in her home district of Tucson, Arizona. And just like Malala she has had a miraculous recovery. Her spirit is undaunted and her cause is to stop the gun violence here in the United States.
After the shocking attack on children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, last year, she painfully and powerfully appealed for gun sanity here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, FORMER ARIZONA CONGRESSWOMAN: Speaking is difficult. But I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children.
We must do something. It will be hard. But the time is now. You must act. Be bold, be courageous; Americans are counting on you. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And just this week, she returned to the scene of the crime against her, a crime that also claimed the lives of six of her constituents. One of them was a 9-year-old girl. And just a few feet from where someone had tried to kill her, Gabrielle Giffords repeated her call to action.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIFFORDS: Be bold, be courageous; please support background checks. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Behind every great woman like Gabby Giffords and Malala Yousafzai there is another woman waiting to be great.
That's it for the weekend edition of our program. I hope it has inspired you and moved you. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.
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