US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that the United States will push for women to be included in the transition to democracy in Arab countries.
"In the coming months and years the women in Egypt and Tunisia and other nations have just as much right as the men to remake their governments to make them responsive, accountable, transparent," Clinton said to rousing applause.
Clinton, speaking during the 2011 International Women of Courage awards at the State Department during International Women's Day, said the US government would back the campaign for women's rights in the Middle East.
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"The United States will stand firmly for the proposition that women must be included in whatever process goes forward. No government can succeed if it excludes half of its people from important decisions," Clinton said.
The chief US diplomat said women who took part in mass protests in central Cairo -- which forced president Hosni Mubarak to step down last month -- "were clearly saying they expected to have a voice and a vote in the future."
She reinforced the point Egyptian women made to the constitutional committee asking why none of Egypt's women legal experts had been invited to join the committee charged with drafting a new constitution for a post-Mubarak Egypt.
"We will certainly be watching and the world will watch," Clinton said.
"It's not just the rest of the world but the women themselves who deserve to be at that table, making those choices that will affect their lives and the lives of their daughters and their sons no matter what government emerges," she said.
