Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the uphill battles women and girls face internationally during an emotional speech in Dublin on Thursday. "We are on the right side of history in this struggle, but there will be many sacrifices and losses until we finally reach a point where daughters are valued as sons," Clinton said as she accepted a humanitarian award at Dublin City University in the Irish capital. She addressed the importance of human rights work on her own life, too, as a woman meeting with other world leaders, most of them men. "It pains me so greatly when I travel to places around the world and am received almost as an exception to the rule." Clinton, who opened the Dublin school's new conflict resolution institute, was headed next to Northern Ireland, where she arrived Friday to help underscore the still tenuous peace her husband helped secure in 1998, days after clashes between loyalists and nationalists. The Republic of Ireland, meanwhile, faces women's rights hurdles of its own, amid a renewed debate over the heavily Catholic country's strict abortion ban.
