Itâs been almost 20 years since Hillary Rodham Clinton solidified her feminist credentials and declared, wearing a pale pink suit in Beijing, âWomenâs rights are human rights and human rights are womenâs rights.â
Now, as Mrs. Clinton contemplates another run for the presidency, that 1995 speech and her work on women have become central to her post-State Department life. On Thursday, Chelsea Clinton moderated a discussion on women and girls with Mrs. Clinton and Melinda Gates at New York University.
The event introduced a new partnership between the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the Gates Foundation that will track the development of women globally from 1995 until today using data from a variety of sources including the World Bank and Google.
Mrs. Clinton called the event on women in Beijing âhistoric and transformationalâ and said the issue has been âone of the great causes of my life.â
She said she noticed the lack of comprehensive data to track development of women and girls while she was at the State Department, where she tried to apply a feminist approach to development. âI wanted to make that part of our foreign policy and I ran into that same problem all these years later,â Mrs. Clinton said.
The program, âNo Ceilings: The Full Participation Project,â is the latest collaboration between the Gates and Clinton Foundations, and will be one of the central initiatives in Mrs. Clintonâs philanthropic work.
âIt was rooted in what was accomplished in Beijing in 1995, before some of you were born, but not all of you,â Mrs. Clinton told the crowd of more than 500 N.Y.U. students.
As Mrs. Clinton completes a memoir about her tenure at the State Department, her legacy has been closely examined. Part of the challenge for Mrs. Clinton and her team will be to communicate that her focus on womenâs rights has deeper diplomatic, geopolitical and national security implications, and is not a politically safe or soft issue as some critics have alleged.
Despite the poor weather, which caused cancellations throughout Washington and up the East Coast, Mrs. Clinton stayed on schedule. Mrs. Gates said she and her husband were âdata geeksâ and the event was peppered with a mix of wonky data and warm, mother-daughter moments â" the kind that some pundits have said could bolster Mrs. Clintonâs image and presidential prospects.
The panel took questions from the crowd and Mrs. Clinton delivered some advice to the young women in the audience. âLearn how to take criticism seriously, but not personally,â she said.