How women wage conflict without violence | Julia Bacha

72,316 views ・ 2016-09-20

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00:12
Twelve years ago, I picked up a camera for the first time
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to film the olive harvest in a Palestinian village in the West Bank.
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I thought I was there to make a single documentary
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and would then move on to some other part of the world.
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But something kept bringing me back.
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Now, usually, when international audiences hear about that part of the world,
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they often just want that conflict to go away.
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bad, and we wish it could just disappear.
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We feel much the same way about other conflicts around the world.
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But every time we turn our attention to the news,
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it seems like one more country has gone up in flames.
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So I've been wondering
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whether we should not start looking at conflict in a different way --
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whether instead of simply wishing to end conflict,
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we focus instead on how to wage conflict.
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This has been a big question for me,
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one I've pursued together with my team at the nonprofit Just Vision.
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After witnessing several different kinds of struggles in the Middle East,
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I started noticing some patterns on the more successful ones.
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I wondered whether these variables held across cases, and if they did,
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what lessons we could glean for waging constructive conflict,
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in Palestine, Israel and elsewhere.
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There is some science about this.
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In a study of 323 major political conflicts
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from 1900 to 2006,
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Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns
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were almost 100 percent more likely to lead to success than violent campaigns.
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Nonviolent campaigns are also less likely to cause physical harm
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to those waging the campaign,
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as well as their opponents.
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And, critically, they typically lead to more peaceful and democratic societies.
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In other words, nonviolent resistance is a more effective and constructive way
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of waging conflict.
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But if that's such an easy choice, why don't more groups use it?
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Political scientist Victor Asal and colleagues
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have looked at several factors
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that shape a political group's choice of tactics.
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And it turns out that the greatest predictor
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of a movement's decision to adopt nonviolence or violence
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is not whether that group is more left-wing or right-wing,
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not whether the group is more or less influenced by religious beliefs,
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not whether it's up against a democracy or a dictatorship,
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and not even the levels of repression that that group is facing.
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The greatest predictor of a movement's decision to adopt nonviolence
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is its ideology regarding the role of women in public life.
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(Applause)
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When a movement includes in its discourse
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language around gender equality,
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it increases dramatically the chances it will adopt nonviolence,
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and thus, the likelihood it will succeed.
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The research squared up with my own documentation
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of political organizing in Israel and Palestine.
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I've noticed that movements which welcome women into leadership positions,
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such as the one I documented in a village called Budrus,
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were much more likely to achieve their goals.
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This village was under a real threat of being wiped off the map
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when Israel started building the separation barrier.
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The proposed route would require
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the destruction of this community's olive groves, their cemeteries
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and would ultimately enclose the village from all sides.
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Through inspired local leadership,
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they launched a nonviolent resistance campaign to stop that from happening.
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The odds were massively stacked against them.
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But they had a secret weapon:
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a 15-year-old girl
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who courageously jumped in front of a bulldozer
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which was about to uproot an olive tree, stopping it.
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In that moment, the community of Budrus realized what was possible
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if they welcomed and encouraged women to participate in public life.
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And so it was that the women of Budrus went to the front lines day after day,
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using their creativity and acumen to overcome multiple obstacles they faced
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in a 10-month unarmed struggle.
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And as you can probably tell at this point,
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they win at the end.
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The separation barrier was changed completely
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to the internationally recognized green line,
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and the women of Budrus came to be known across the West Bank
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for their indomitable energy.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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I want to pause for a second, which you helped me do,
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because I do want to tackle two very serious misunderstandings
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that could happen at this point.
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The first one is that I don't believe
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women are inherently or essentially more peaceful than men.
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But I do believe that in today's world,
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women experience power differently.
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Having had to navigate being in the less powerful position
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in multiple aspects of their lives,
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women are often more adept
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at how to surreptitiously pressure for change
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against large, powerful actors.
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The term "manipulative," often charged against women in a derogatory way,
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reflects a reality in which women have often had to find ways
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other than direct confrontation to achieve their goals.
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And finding alternatives to direct confrontation
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is at the core of nonviolent resistance.
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Now to the second potential misunderstanding.
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I've been talking a lot about my experiences in the Middle East,
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and some of you might be thinking now
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that the solution then is for us to educate Muslim and Arab societies
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to be more inclusive of their women.
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If we were to do that, they would be more successful.
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They do not need this kind of help.
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Women have been part of the most influential movements
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coming out of the Middle East,
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but they tend to be invisible to the international community.
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Our cameras are largely focused on the men
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who often end up involved in the more confrontational scenes
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that we find so irresistible in our news cycle.
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And we end up with a narrative that not only erases women
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from the struggles in the region
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but often misrepresents the struggles themselves.
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In the late 1980s, an uprising started in Gaza,
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and quickly spread to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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It came to be known as the First Intifada,
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and people who have any visual memory of it
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generally conjure up something like this:
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Palestinian men throwing rocks at Israeli tanks.
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The news coverage at the time
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made it seem like stones, Molotov cocktails and burning tires
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were the only activities taking place in the Intifada.
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This period, though, was also marked by widespread nonviolent organizing
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in the forms of strikes, sit-ins and the creation of parallel institutions.
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During the First Intifada,
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whole sectors of the Palestinian civilian population mobilized,
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cutting across generations, factions and class lines.
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They did this through networks of popular committees,
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and their use of direct action and communal self-help projects
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challenged Israel's very ability
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to continue ruling the West Bank and Gaza.
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According to the Israeli Army itself,
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97 percent of activities during the First Intifada were unarmed.
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And here's another thing that is not part of our narrative about that time.
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For 18 months in the Intifada,
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women were the ones calling the shots behind the scenes:
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Palestinian women from all walks of life
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in charge of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people
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in a concerted effort to withdraw consent from the occupation.
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Naela Ayesh, who strived to build a self-sufficient Palestinian economy
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by encouraging women in Gaza to grow vegetables in their backyards,
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an activity deemed illegal by the Israeli authorities at that time;
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Rabeha Diab, who took over decision-making authority
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for the entire uprising
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when the men who had been running it
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were deported;
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Fatima Al Jaafari, who swallowed leaflets containing the uprising's directives
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in order to spread them across the territories
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without getting caught;
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and Zahira Kamal,
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who ensured the longevity of the uprising
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by leading an organization
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that went from 25 women to 3,000 in a single year.
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Despite their extraordinary achievements,
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none of these women have made it into our narrative of the First Intifada.
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We do this in other parts of the globe, too.
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In our history books, for instance, and in our collective consciousness,
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men are the public faces and spokespersons
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for the 1960s struggle for racial justice in the United States.
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But women were also a critical driving force,
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mobilizing, organizing, taking to the streets.
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How many of us think of Septima Clark
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when we think of the United States Civil Rights era?
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Remarkably few.
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But she played a crucial role in every phase of the struggle,
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particularly by emphasizing literacy and education.
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She's been omitted, ignored,
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like so many other women who played critical roles
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in the United States Civil Rights Movement.
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This is not about getting credit.
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It's more profound than that.
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The stories we tell matter deeply to how we see ourselves,
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and to how we believe movements are run
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and how movements are won.
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The stories we tell about a movement like the First Intifada
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or the United States Civil Rights era
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matter deeply and have a critical influence
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in the choices Palestinians,
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Americans
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and people around the world will make
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next time they encounter an injustice
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and develop the courage to confront it.
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If we do not lift up the women who played critical roles in these struggles,
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we fail to offer up role models to future generations.
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Without role models, it becomes harder
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for women to take up their rightful space
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in public life.
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And as we saw earlier,
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one of the most critical variables
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in determining whether a movement will be successful or not
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is a movement's ideology regarding the role of women
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in public life.
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This is a question of whether we're moving
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towards more democratic and peaceful societies.
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In a world where so much change is happening,
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and where change is bound to continue at an increasingly faster pace,
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it is not a question of whether we will face conflict,
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but rather a question
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of which stories will shape
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how we choose to wage conflict.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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