American women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony's remark, "We women must be up and doing - I can hardly sit still when I think of the great work waiting to be done," was repeated several times during Monday night's Women Working Worldwide panel discussion featuring international leaders.
Ann Gordon, director of Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, said Anthony uttered those words at the age of 81, and was speaking about the dawn of the 20th century.
"[She was] challenging women to be alert and active citizens," Gordon said. "The imperative has not changed at all."
The event - part of the Susan B. Anthony Legacy Centennial sponsored by the Institute for Women's Leadership and the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - celebrated International Women's Day and honored Anthony's legacy near the centennial of her death.
Discussion moderator Charlotte Bunch, founder and executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at the University, introduced the event's speakers Catherine Bertini and Layli Miller-Muro as women who exemplify different ways people can work for women.
"There is really no issue that doesn't have some way in which it impacts the lives of women," Bunch said.
She said both Bertini and Miller-Muro changed the women's lives through their work.
Bertini, now a professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, was the driving force behind reform of the U.N. World Food Program, where she was the chief executive for 10 years.
Bertini said she felt connected to the history of women's rights growing up in New York, and was motivated by a book about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor.
"It taught me a lesson at age 8 that women can do anything, but it might be very, very difficult to get there," she said. "And I decided then that whatever I was going to do, I was going to work hard to get it done."
While running the World Food Program, Bertini provided food aid to Rwanda genocide refugees, and realized it was the women in the culture who were most vested in making sure their families were fed.
She changed the system, and began distributing food aid through women instead of men, who further distributed it equally and cooked it.
Bertini said she always looked at things from the perspective of the women she was trying to help.
"We need strong programs for training and education if we really expect these women to move to the next stage of their lives," she said.
In Pakistan, Bertini created recruiting mechanisms to encourage girls to attend school, including earning a liter of vegetable oil in exchange for attending a month of school. She said school attendance increased between 100 and 300 percent, because the can of oil was worth at least half of what the student's father was making in wages.
Bertini also helped provide food aid to women in Peru and Afghanistan, and has helped increase breast-feeding in underprivileged women, but said, "There's still a lot more to be done."
The second panel speaker, Miller-Muro, is the founder and executive director of the Tahirh Justice Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting women from human rights abuses through legal aid and public advocacy.
She founded it based on work she did with a 17-year-old girl who fled Togo, in fear of forced polygamous marriage and genital mutilation. Miller-Muro helped gain asylum for the girl in 1996, and set national precedent and revolutionized asylum law in the United States.
Miller-Muro said a leadership-training program she was part of during her sophomore year in college at the Eagleton Institute of Politics influenced her work with women.
She said despite the name of the panel, she doesn't consider herself an international leader.
"What I hope I am is a supporter for women who are international leaders," Miller-Muro said. "My job is to provide legal defense and protection of women who are courageous ... and exhibited an incredible degree of leadership."
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