Tina Brown to host 6th annual Women in the World Summit
Just days before thousands flock to attend the annual Women in the World Summit in New York City, Tina Brown, famed editor, journalist, author and founder of Women in the World, sat down with me in the Yahoo newsroom.
Six years in, you could argue that this year’s conference is the most high-profile and most newsworthy conference to date in matters of women’s struggles and triumphs around the world.
This year, Women in the World has partnered with The New York Times as well as Georgetown University for research on girls and war. While Boko Haram and the #bringourgirlsback movement were the dominant areas of interest at last year’s conference, this year, the Islamic State group and the female recruits are front and center. You can watch a livestream of the summit by clicking here.
This year’s conference includes five panelists who are on Time magazine’s 2015 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, including Hillary Clinton. The Democratic presidential hopeful is cutting short her tour across the heartland to speak at the summit on women’s rights and advancement for girls. The question is, how will the audience receive her comments given the controversy over the Clinton Foundation’s track record of accepting millions of dollars from foreign donors such as Saudi Arabia, which has a less than stellar history when it comes to women’s rights.
At a time when Clinton is making another run for the presidency, millions of suppressed women around the world continue to be subjected to rape, mutilation, kidnapping and murder. The conference will cover all areas, from India’s female empowerment movement, addressing the country’s shameful history of rape, to an Israeli mother joining forces with a Palestinian mother, both grieving over the sons they lost. Generation Katniss, a sort of millennial take on women’s rights, will also be discussed, as well as the daily battle over self-esteem in an era of endless pressures from social media.
