When Hillary Clinton heard that an 8-year-old Saudi girl had been sold to a man in his 50s to pay off her father’s debt, the U.S. secretary of state telephoned Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal to protest.
Clinton’s call -- on the type of issue usually handled by an aide -- symbolized her fervor for making women’s advancement a core part of her national-security efforts, even in dealing with problems such as Iran’s suspected nuclear threat or the Islamist violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"Women are key to our being able to resolve all of those difficult conflicts," Clinton said in an August speech. Since then, she has pursued initiatives to help women gain political power, personal safety and enough money to help their communities and countries improve economically and transition to democracy.
"There is nothing that has been more important to me over the course of my lifetime than advancing the rights of women and girls," she said in a Nov. 6 Washington speech. "And it is now a cornerstone of American foreign policy."