On Thursday morning, first lady Melania Trump honored 13 women from around the world during the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Awards ceremony in Washington.
The awards, attended for years by Trump’s predecessor Michelle Obama, are presented to women “who have demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment,” according to the State Department.
The first lady took the opportunity to speak about the plight of women at home and abroad, declaring to attendees, “The time for empowering women around the world is now, for wherever women are diminished, the entire world is diminished with them.”
“We must continually reaffirm our American values as we join with the international community to make our world safer through acts of collaborative and individual bravery,” Trump said.
Most powerfully, the first lady transmitted a clear warning to those who fail to uphold women’s rights, asserting, “Together with the international community, the United States must send a clear message that we are watching.”
Trump presents a unique challenge for feminists, daring them to defend a woman whose husband, they believe, embodies everything wrong with society, against attacks predicated on sexist issues including her physical appearance. The women’s movement continues to grapple with those questions, splitting in February, for instance, over the revelation that a journalist called Trump a “hooker” at a fashion event.
But while American feminists quibble over language and Lena Dunham, Melania Trump may be able to nudge the movement in a direction conservatives have long urged it to more seriously prioritize.
“I grew up in a small town in Slovenia near a beautiful river and forest. Slovenia is a small country that back then, was under communist rule,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention last July, continuing, “We always knew about the incredible place called America. America was the word for freedom and opportunity. America meant if you could dream it, you could become it.”
She went on to say, “I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here.”
“I’m an immigrant, and let me tell you, no one values the freedom and opportunity of America more than me, both as an independent woman and as someone who immigrated to America,” Trump proclaimed.
American women enjoy more freedoms today than ever in human history, yet we continue to focus obsessively on trivial questions from song lyrics to television shows.
As an immigrant woman who came to this country and built a successful career, Trump may be positioned to help American feminists understand their own privilege relative to the rest of the world, especially as it comes to freedom and opportunity.
If the first lady is able to leverage her unique perspective in a way that helps women direct their efforts outwards, she could go a long way towards realigning the priorities of the movement.
Thursday, the first lady explained, “Where women are empowered, towns and villages, schools and economies, are empowered.”
“And together,” she concluded, “we are all made stronger with them.”
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
