In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so.

Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.