MR.RAO: For those of you who are unaware, minus the famous surname, she was a lawyer
back in 1976.
She started her own law firm.
And for the first time in the history of Britain, she was the first wife of a Prime Minister
who had her own career.
I think that was the first time that has ever happened in British history.
So Cherie, how difficult was it to be in the limelight and also to have your own career?
And I'm sure there must have been a fallout.
There must have been a few issues that emanate from it.
So let's talk about it.
And how difficult is it, again, to be in the spotlight, again, and to fight it out through
your own career?
CHERIE BLAIR: Well, I think that, first of all, one of the reasons I was the first spouse
of a Prime Minister to actually have gone to university, and that includes Dennis Thatcher
who didn't go to university, by the way, is just a generational thing.
My predecessors, if you like, were of a different generation where girls, you know, didn't get
educated.
In fact, Dorothy Macmillan, the wife of Macmillan the Prime Minister, actually told her daughter
that she shouldn't go to university and stopped her going to university.
Because she said all she needed to do was to know how to run a household.
So there's a generational thing and a change in what we expect from women.
What was it like holding down a full-time job as well as being married to the Prime
Minister?
Well, I didn't think after 20 to 25 years in my own career where I'd work when I had
three children under five, when I was essentially supporting my husband as he went on his political
career-- why would I change my job just because he had changed his?
Now, this did cause --
MR.RAO: Absolutely.
[APPLAUSE]
MS.
BLAIR: This did cause some consternation in Downing Street.
Because they basically expected me to be there to be the hostess and to support and to be
wheeled out on the occasions when it was required.
And I did all that, by the way.
But one of the things that enabled me to carry on with my career actually was IT.
Because by the time I got to Downing Street, I was able to conduct my business through
-- from Downing Street.
So I might be dealing with my legal papers.I might be answering client's queries from my
desk.
My client would not know where I was, nor would they know that possibly half an hour
before that I'd been down greeting the First Lady of Tanzania
to have tea with her.
Now, I couldn't do that without IT.
And that made a huge difference to me.
And it's why, when I left Downing Street and I was thinking if IT makes such a difference
to a fortunate woman like me, surely there must be opportunities for using IT to bring
advantages to women entrepreneurs across the world.
And that's one of the missions of my foundation, which is to help women with what we see as
the three Cs that they need for growing their own business.
And the three are-- we've mentioned one already, Confidence.
Because too many women are told what they can't do, not what they can do.
The second C is Capability, Capacities, training.
It's-- women, again, don't get the same access to education across the world as men do.
Business is partly instinctive.
But partly, it's about knowing how to run things right, how to read a spreadsheet, how
to build a business plan, how to make the right sort of pitch to get the sort of money
that Chanda will then loan you whatever capital that you need.
And the third one is access to Capital.
And capital is a big issue for women entrepreneurs.
And I know there must be many of them in this room that know only too well that when it
comes to getting the money to grow and expand your businesses, it's very hard to move the
needle to get beyond the skeptical of the male officers in the banks who don't actually
really believe that a woman can succeed in business.
And so we work with our women to build those things.
And we do that by using technology.
And finally, I'd say this.
know, if we're going to do anything in this world, we've got to do something about men.
[LAUGHTER]
MR.RAO: All right.
MS.
BLAIR: Yeah.
That includes you.
Men need to--
[LAUGHTER]
--men need to understand that women are very coarse.
Men need to understand that the women do face obstacles that they don't understand.
And men need to understand that they need to do their share as well.
I was recently at the American Embassy in Delhi where we'd done a program with the American
Embassy called We Can.
And I have two of our women entrepreneurs who won that competition are in the room here.
But we had a group of 25 Indian women entrepreneurs who came to present their business ideas.
At the same time, the American Embassy had invited along some IT entrepreneurs that they
had been working with, mainly men.
And the women were talking about that obstacles.
And yet one of the young men stood up in the audience, said, I don't understand what this
woman is talking about.
He says, sometimes when I go to an interview or to seek a business, people ask me about
whether I'm married.
And you know, I don't find that offensive.
So why are these women complaining that they can't get any help and assistance, because
when they come there all everyone is asking them about is whether they're married.
And that just showed -- the women were very firm with him about there is a difference.
Because for a man here, if you say you're married,vpeople will think, oh,vresponsible,
not likelyv-- you know, got responsibilities,vlikely to be a good bet.
For a woman here who's looking for capital incomes and they say, are you married, and
she says, yes, I am, they think, oh, difficult-- going to get pregnant, you know, got other
responsibilities.
So it's a completely different mindset.
And unless young men, like the young men in those rooms, understand that understand the
difficulties that their wives and their sisters and, yes, their mothers are experiencing,
then we're never going to change this dynamic.
MR.RAO: Thank you, Cherie.
In fact, you talked about--
[APPLAUSE]