A secretary of state. A top presidential adviser. An iconic film star. Fashion designers, TV anchors, and a queen. Those prominent women and many more crowded into a Manhattan theater this weekend for a conference on empowering women across the globe. But they weren't the stars of the event. It was the women's rights and human rights activists from around the world who drew the cheers, and sometimes tears, at “Women in the World: Stories and Solutions,” a gathering organized by Tina Brown, editor of The Daily Beast Web site, as they talked about how women have progressed and what remains to be done. Marietou Diarra of Senegal, for example, who spoke to moderator Diane Sawyer at a panel Saturday about the practice of genital cutting that led to the deaths of two of her daughters - one at age 3, one at 7. Tears streaming down her face, Diarra recounted how she saved the lives of her subsequent daughters by spearheading a movement among women in her village and dozens of others to ban the practice. She repeated their slogan: “Let us unite and decide!” In another panel, Queen Rania of Jordan spoke to Katie Couric about empowering young girls with education, a cause she promotes actively in her own country. The conference opened Friday evening with remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who brought her daughter, Chelsea, along. The audience watched a clip of Clinton, as first lady, making her famous remarks at the 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing, where she declared that “Women's rights are human rights.” Clinton quipped that those remarks came “15 years and many hairstyles ago.” Progress had been made, she joked, on both fronts. A special reading followed of the play “Seven,” a series of monologues about seven activists across the world, written by seven playwrights and woven together. For this single performance Brown had drafted Meryl Streep and Marcia Gay Harden, among others; it was directed by Julie Taymor, of “Lion King” fame.
