    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1999)]
    [Pages 441-443]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at the Sixth Millennium Evening at the White House

    March 15, 1999

        The President. Thank you. First of all, let me welcome all of you
    here tonight and thank our participants. I will be very brief, because
    the only thing that frustrates me about these Millennial Evenings is
    that you will be amazed--we will get literally thousands of questions
    that will start coming in on the Internet and lots of frustrated people
    out there. So I don't want to take a lot of time.
        I would like to say again--I think I speak for all of us--when
    Hillary had the idea to do these evenings, I thought they sounded
    interesting or at least maybe most of them would be interesting.
    [Laughter] They have all turned out to be fascinating and, each in their
    own way, better than the ones before. And I think this is a great gift
    she has given our country for the millennium, and I thank her for it.
        The remarks generated scores of questions in my mind and one fact I
    want to say. If you ever want an example of whether or not the gender
    gap exists, you are looking at it--[laughter]--because I would not be
    here if it did not exist. Or if it did not exist in the right way, I
    would have had bigger margins, depending on how you look at it.
    [Laughter]
        One of the things I wish that somebody would comment on before we
    get through--although, it's not my question--is, if women learn
    different ways of doing things through the century of struggle, how
    would this Congress be different if the party divisions were exactly the
    same, but 55 percent of the Members were women? That would be
    interesting. I don't know the answer to that, but feel free to comment
    if anyone wants to. [Laughter]
        I want to ask Professor Kessler-Harris to answer a question that has
    concerned me quite a great deal, just from remembering the patterns of
    life with my working grandmother and my working mother. Now that we have
    opened more opportunities for women in the workplace, but they still are
    spending, I think, even in two-parent households, more than half of the
    time spent raising children, and we've even opened more opportunities
    for women in the political workplace, and more are being opened all the
    time, I would like to have you comment on what you think the potential
    is for voluntary citizens' groups of women to still produce both social
    movements and specific legislative changes. That is, will voluntary
    groups still have the same impact? And if so, how are we going to
    continue to encourage that?
        Because I think that that's really the unique story of the whole
    20th century, all those parades and everything we saw in the films. Will
    more women in the workplace, still having to raise the kids--and in the
    political workplace, which may make women think they're represented in
    more ordinary ways--lead to a reduction or an increase in these
    voluntary associations? And what are some specific examples where we
    might see voluntary movements produce social movements and legislative
    change?

    [At this point, the discussion continued.]

        The President. I just wanted to say one thing that I have learned
    from a lifetime of sort of listening to the way people talk and relate.
    And this goes to Deborah's--the previous question, too. I think if you
    will really

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    study the Americans and how they vote, you will see that sometimes they
    vote based on income, sometimes they vote based on racial experience,
    sometimes they vote on philosophy. But a lot of the gender gap is a
    cultural gap; it's almost about the way we relate to one another and
    define winning and losing in our own lives.
        And I think in order for men to ever get through this, one of the
    things that men are raised to believe is that fulfillment and success is
    defined in terms of winning and control; whereas people who--women,
    historically, have had more nurturing roles. They have to raise their
    children. So you don't think--maybe you have to control your child for a
    while, but sooner or later you even give up on that. But winning is
    defined not just as winning against someone else, but it's doing
    something in the context of your family, in the context of your
    childrearing.
        And I think a lot of subconscious patterns that men are raised with
    make it almost impossible for them to really get there on this issue.
    And I think that for a father to raise a son to believe that there is a
    way to win in life and find fulfillment in a shared victory and shared
    decisionmaking and not always victory over someone else and continued
    control over someone else, I think it's something that take some doing.
        But it's something that doesn't come naturally to men once we've
    been socialized. And I think that's an important part of this, and that
    until we can change it, it will never be just like it should be.

    [At this point, the discussion continued.]

        The President. Thank you, Vicky. First of all, I'm sure all of you
    here know how deplorable the conditions are for women in Afghanistan.
    Hillary and I had an event here at the White House not very long ago, we
    had two Afghan women here, among others, to sort of stand for what women
    in their country are going through.
        I want someone in the audience to help me. There is a national
    organization of women, a group now focused on this, and most of the
    leaders are in California, although some in the East Coast--Ann, what's
    the name of it?
        Ms. Ann Lewis. The Feminist Majority. And Ellie Smeal is here----
        The President. Yes, Ellie is here working--Feminist Majority is
    working on it. And I'm going to have a meeting with some of their
    leaders pretty soon to talk about what more I can do, aside from not
    recognizing the Taliban and speaking against it.
        I think the important thing is that we need people to support this
    organization. We need women and men around the country to engage in
    contributing to a common effort to highlight what is going on, who is
    being hurt, what the consequences are to the society as a whole, and
    what we can do to help the people that are being hurt?
        This is the 50th anniversary of the International Declaration of
    Human Rights. It is simply not acceptable to say that this is nothing
    more than an expression of religious convictions. We just had an
    election in Iran, local elections. There were hundreds of women
    candidates. We see, even in Iraq, a country we have serious differences
    with, their women are not subject to these sorts of constraints because
    they are women.
        And I think that the most important thing I could say to an ordinary
    citizen is, write your Member of Congress and tell them not to
    acknowledge or recognize the Government under any circumstances until
    there are changes, and get in touch with the Feminist Majority and get
    all the material and make sure that you are doing whatever you can do to
    help those women over there and to give support for the ones that are
    sticking their necks out to try to change things.

    [At this point, the discussion continued.]

        The President. When the Founders wrote the documents that got us all
    started, they said they were doing all this so that we could better
    protect life and liberty and pursue happiness. And even they were smart
    enough to know that they weren't really writing that for white male
    property owners only, even though those were the only folks that could
    vote then.
        So a great deal of the history of this country is about the
    expansion of the notion of liberty, with notions of equality and
    justice. And we hardly ever think about what they meant by the pursuit
    of happiness. They

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    didn't mean riding the rides at the county fair. They really meant the
    pursuit of a good life, dreaming dreams and trying to live them.
        When I think about what the women's issues of the 21st century will
    be, I do think there will still be some significant liberty, equality
    issues related to wealth and power, closing the wage gap, the earnings
    gap, dealing with the enormously complicated problem of the fact that
    there are more elderly women than men--because you may be genetically
    superior to us after all--[laughter]--and that, as a consequence, their
    poverty rate is twice the rate of elderly men, breaking all the glass
    ceilings that have been alluded to.
        But I predict to you that there will be increasing focus, more than
    any time in our history, on the latter purpose of our getting together
    as a nation, and that is the pursuit of happiness. And I believe that
    will require us to deal with questions of balance and interdependence,
    more than ever before. The one we talked about a little tonight is a
    balance between work and family. There is no more important job for any
    society than raising children. And men have to recognize that, too. But
    I think that will be a big deal, how to balance work and family.
        The other big balance questions will come involve with how do you
    keep society together with all the diversity we share, not just gender
    but the racial diversity, the cultural diversity, the religious
    diversity. And women will be uniquely positioned to play a major role in
    that.
        And finally--I'll just give one other example because we're running
    out of time--how do we balance our obligation to prosper as well as we
    can and preserve the planet in the face of the evidence on climate
    change and other things?
        So I believe there will be a huge challenge, which is an enormous
    opportunity for women, in the whole area of our pursuit of happiness
    properly defined.
        When Susan B. Anthony came here in 1906 and gave what turned out to
    be her last public comment, in a church here in Washington, DC, the last
    public word she ever uttered was, ``Failure is impossible.'' I am
    persuaded by the presence of you in this crowd and those whom you
    represent that on the edge of a new century she's still right.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The White House Millennium Evening began at 7:35 p.m. in the East
    Room at the White House. In his remarks, the President referred to
    Deborah Tannen, professor, Georgetown University; Vicky LeBlanc,
    attorney in Delafield, WI; and Eleanor (Ellie) Smeal, president,
    Feminist Majority. The panelists participating in the discussion,
    entitled ``Women as Citizens: Vital Voices Through the Century,'' were:
    Alice Kessler, professor, Columbia University, Nancy Cott, professor,
    Yale University, and Ruth Simmons, president, Smith College. The
    discussion following the panelists was moderated by Ellen Lovall,
    Director, White House Millennium Council. The transcript made available
    by the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks of the
    First Lady, the panelists, and the question-and-answer portion of the
    evening. The lecture was cybercast on the Internet.