U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gathered other influential women political leaders on Saturday to promote the empowerment of their gender, according to Reuters. "We all have experiences we would like to share," she told about 20 female political figures, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first elected woman head of state. "We have to promote and empower women," she added. "We are going to champion the empowerment of women because it is only right," said Rice, who held the meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The goal of the exclusively female meeting was to discuss strategies to improve the lives of women worldwide and cultivate new leaders like themselves in the future. Women ministers from Benin, Barbados, Croatia, Iceland, Austria, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Greece, Malawi, Mozambique, Poland, Tanzania and Lichtenstein were among those represented at the meeting.
