"My advice to women is to have a sense of confidence that what you have to offer is worthwhile. You can make a difference. You have to make a difference. Then, having made up your mind that you have been put on this earth to make a difference, you must use the resources that are available to you – through a process like iKNOW and the whole network, for example – to be able to do that! "

iKNOW Politics: You were the first female Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the US government. As a woman striving for this leadership position – as well as other positions you have held – what challenges have you faced?

I never thought that I would be able to be Secretary of State. It just never occurred to me, mainly – as I often put it – because I had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt. At the time, there was the sense that being Secretary of State was not a woman’s job, not even a job for a woman to aspire to.

I was up against the fact that many people doubted that women could even do this job at all – that was the main challenge. But, once I had become Ambassador to the United Nations, my name was floated as a potential candidate. It was also interesting to see that some people were critical of me, saying that I was overly-ambitious. Being “ambitious”, of course, is something they do not say about a man with the same qualities. Adjectives that are applied to describe certain characteristics are positive when referring to a man, but are viewed as negative when applied to a woman.

iKNOW Politics: How did you overcome the lack of acceptance of “a woman in a skirt” having such a high-level position?

Answer: First of all, I was bound and determined to do a good job. And I worked very hard, and I think I was very well-prepared. Ultimately, there were also a lot of other women who were supporting me. Obviously there were men supporting me as well, but I knew that I was expected to do a better job than a man, and I just kept pushing.

iKNOW Politics: What impact do you believe women in such high-level positions in government have?

In most societies, women are more than half of the population, so having women in political and economic positions is good for any country; it employs more than half of its resources. I also think that we’re much better off if men and women work together. That said, I think there are certain characteristics women possess that are very helpful in diplomacy and in all aspects of governing, such as an interest in personal relationships and an ability to see another person’s point of view.

Women are able to make a difference because they are able to view national security issues, for example, or the issues of their specific countries, from different angles. Our experiences allow us to better approach issues and see the linkages between them.

iKNOW Politics: Has your leadership style changed over the years?

Yes. One thing that happens to every woman--no matter where she is--is that she goes to a meeting, listens, and then thinks that she might want to make a point. But then she doubts herself and worries that what she wants to say is not really smart, so she decides not to say anything. And then some man says exactly what she was going to say, and everyone thinks it’s brilliant.

Then the woman wishes she had spoken. I had my first experience with this when I first went to an informal session of the Security Council. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just wait and see who’s who, and try to get a sense of the personalities and dynamics in the room before I speak.’ And then it occurred to me, ‘I can’t do that! I’m the United States, I have to speak or our view will not be evident.’

That was the first time I realized that as a woman, you often have to separate the way that you might feel as a woman from what your responsibilities are as a leader. I also learned that you have to adapt to the fact that the adjectives applied to men and women are different. If a woman really cares about something, she’s called “emotional”, but a man can be called “passionate”.

So I think I learned to argue in a way that was calmer, in a way that did not expose my deep feelings about an issue.

iKNOW Politics: How do you think an initiative like iKNOW Politics can be used to promote the advancement of women in the political arena?

There are a number of ways it can be used. iKNOW Politics can help, at a minimum, by providing information because activists and officials can’t have an impact if they don’t have factual information. What I have said when I was teaching, when I was in the government, and I say it now, in order to participate in policy, politics, government, business, and NGOs, women have to know what they’re talking about.

It is very important to have substantive information, and to be able to present your positions from a basis of fact. iKNOW Politics can also help women to build networks. One of the things I’ve always believed is that developing a support system, in whatever job you have, is absolutely essential. This is what I did when I was first at the UN, and then as Secretary of State.

At the UN, I asked my assistant to invite all of the women permanent representatives at the UN for a lunch. Keep in mind, when I was at the UN, there were 183 countries, so I thought it would be a big lunch. But when I got to my apartment, there were only six other women there – from Canada, Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, the Philippines, Lichtenstein – and me. I decided we should form a caucus. And we did; we called ourselves the “G-7”.

We agreed we would always take each other’s phone calls. And we developed a support system that allowed us to accomplish many things. When I was Secretary of State, I did the same thing; I created a group of women foreign ministers. At our largest, there were 14 of us. We shared substantive issues as well as personal stories. I think that it’s very important to develop that kind of support system.

For example, I found that the Foreign Minister from South Africa at the time shared some of the same challenges of having to prove that she could do her job, just as I did. And we found many other areas where there were common threads. The iKNOW Politics network is not only providing substantive information, but it is linking women through commonality of experiences.

iKNOW Politics: There are various technological tools available now – new cell phone technology, the Internet, etc. How can women make the best use of these different technologies? How do we ensure that women who have access to technology such as cell phones or the Internet or women who become members of iKNOW Politics share the knowledge they have with other women?

Women must get together and share their knowledge, whether it’s over work, or being with children, or just creating small groups to share various kinds of information and mutual support. In some villages, for instance, the woman who has access to the only cell phone around actually rents it out to people.

The phone then becomes a new power tool. It is critical for this woman to share physical access to her cell phone, teach someone else to use it, or take information from it and do what women do very naturally -- gather other women together to talk and share information. As American women, however, we need to be careful not to superimpose our image of how to do things on women from other countries. But, information must be shared.

A woman who gets power – either because she has a particular position in society or government or because she has a cell phone – can’t become a queen bee! Women must help other women. I have this saying that I use quite frequently, which is that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other. A woman with power must understand that, in actuality, her role is to help others. For a woman who wants to be at the center of power, she must understand that her power is actually maximized by encouraging more women to participate in the system.

iKNOW Politics: For more senior women in power, there is often a tendency to think that younger women haven’t yet earned the opportunity to serve in similar positions, that they should respect their elders, and that it is “not their turn yet” to be prominent in politics. How do we change the mindset of more senior women to allow for opportunities for younger women?

Well, being one of the elders….I believe it’s important for young women to respect the experience of older women. In the United States, a lot of young women don’t know how much people my age went through to achieve what we have. Older women’s hard work and achievements should be respected.

At the same time, older women must remember that they’re not going to be around forever and that their big legacy is to let younger women take on increasingly important roles. They must view young women as legitimate players within the system. It’s a two-way street. Question: How did you set your priorities for how you made public policy? Answer: We could spend several days on this topic! Policymaking is a very complicated process. When you are Secretary of State, or ambassador, or elected or appointed to other positions, you make decisions within a complex system.

Within that system, you have to set your own priorities. For me, it was very difficult. I think that many women may have the same issue I did, which is that there were so many things I wanted to do… mainly because I hadn’t been allowed to do them before. It’s important to decide what the really important things are; otherwise you get yourself into everything. For instance, I decided that women’s issues were important to me.

I did not want women’s issues to be just a sidebar; they should be central to American foreign policy. I prioritized women not just because I was a feminist, but because I understood that societies are more stable if women are economically and politically empowered.

iKNOW Politics: How could a resource like iKNOW Politics, a kind of one-stop shop for information, have benefited you in your career, had it been available?

It would have been very helpful. There are always certain issues that you’re more familiar with and know well because you’ve been working on them. But you don’t always have widespread knowledge or facts at your fingertips about a range of policy issues. For example, if you want to show that reforming health care is essential in order to deal with a particular health crisis a particular country is experiencing, you won’t have the facts and figures off the top of your head.

And, you can’t argue your point of view if you don’t have the facts. Nor can you fully understand the breadth of an issue, or how it affects other people unless you have access to information. It’s hard for an American to make this point, because we have so much information. However, in other places, having access to a source of objective information is the most important factor. iKNOW Politics will also serve women’s need for support. If you’re a Member of Parliament, and you’re trying to figure out how a particular parliamentary issue is dealt with in a country other than your own, you can benefit from information from other women who have dealt with similar issues.

Also, the technology is such that you can actually develop personal contact with other people. I think that this kind of sharing experience – beyond just sharing facts – is extremely important.

iKNOW Politics: If you were to make one recommendation, what piece of advice would you share with iKNOW members, particularly women candidates and officials, as they progress in their political careers?

My advice to women is to have a sense of confidence that what you have to offer is worthwhile. You can make a difference. You have to make a difference. Then, having made up your mind that you have been put on this earth to make a difference, you must use the resources that are available to you – through a process like iKNOW and the whole network, for example – to be able to do that!