[Kobi]

Here in the United States, American women went from holding 37 percent of all jobs forty years ago to nearly 48 percent today. And the productivity gains attributable to this increase account for more than $3.5 trillion in GDP growth over those four decades. Similarly, fast-growing Asian economies could boost their per capita incomes by as much as 14 percent by 2020 if they brought more women into the workforce.

Laws and traditions that hold back women, hold back entire societies, creating more opportunities for women and girls will grow economies and spread prosperity. When I first began talking about this using rape data from the World Bank and private sector analyses there were doubters who couldn’t quite put the pieces together. But that debate is over. Opening the doors to one’s economy for woman will make a difference.

Now, I want to conclude where I began, with the unfinished business we face here at home. The challenges and opportunities I’ve outlined today are not just for the people of the developing world. America must face this too if we want to continue leading the world.

Traveling the globe these last four years reaffirmed and deepened my pride in our country and the ideals we represent. But it also challenged me to think about who we are and the values we are supposed to be living here at home in order to represent abroad After all, our global leadership for peace and prosperity, for freedom and equality, is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation.

And yes, we now have American women at high levels of business, academia, and government—you name it. But, as we’ve seen in recent months, we’re still asking age-old questions about how to make women’s way in male-dominated fields, how to balance the demands of work and family. The Economist magazine recently published what it called a “glass-ceiling index” ranking countries based on factors like opportunities for women in the workplace and equal pay. The United States was not even in the top 10. Worse, recent studies have found that, on average, women live shorter lives in America than in any other major industrialized country.

Think about it for a minute. We are the richest and most powerful country in the world. Yet many American women today are living shorter lives than their mothers, especially those with the least education. That is a historic reversal that rivals the decline in life expectancy for Russian men after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Now there is no single explanation for why this is happening. Prescription drug overdoses have spiked: obesity, smoking, lack of health insurance, intractable poverty. But the fact is that for too many American women, opportunity and the dream of upward mobility—the American Dream— remains elusive.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. I think of the extraordinary sacrifices my mother made to survive her own difficult childhood, to give me not only life, but opportunity along with love and inspiration. And I’m very proud of my own daughter and I look at all these young women I’m privileged to work with or know through Chelsea and it’s hard to imagine turning the clock back on them. But in places throughout America large and small the clock is turning back.

So, we have work to do. Renewing America’s vitality at home and strengthening our leadership abroad will take the energy and talents of all our people, women and men.

If America is going to lead, we need to learn from the women of the world who have blazed new paths and developed new solutions, on everything from economic development to education to environmental protection.

If America is going to lead, we need to catch up with so much of the rest of the world and finally ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women.

If America is going to lead, we need to stand by the women of Afghanistan after our combat troops come home, we need to speak up for all the women working to realize the promise of the Arab Spring, and do more to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands of mothers who die every year during childbirth from preventable causes and so much more.

If America is going to lead, we need to stand by the women of Afghanistan after our combat troops come home, we need to speak up for all the women working to realize the promise of the Arab Spring, and do more to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands of mothers who die every year during childbirth from preventable causes and so much more.

But that’s not all.

Because if America is going to lead we expect ourselves to lead, we need to empower women here at home to participate fully in our economy and our society, we need to make equal pay a reality, we need to extending family and medical leave benefits to more workers and make them paid, we need to encourage more women and girls to pursue careers in math and science.

We need to invest in our people so they can live up to their own God-given potential.

That’s how America will lead in the world.

So let’s learn from the wisdom of every mother and father all over the world who teaches their daughters that there is no limit on how big she can dream and how much she can achieve.

This truly is the unfinished business of the 21st century. And It is the work we are all called to do. I look forward to being to be your partner in all the days and years ahead. Lets keep fighting for opportunity and dignity, let’s keep fighting for freedom and equality, let's keep fighting for full participation. And let's keep telling the world over and over again that yes, women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights once and for all.