Decades of conflict in Turkey's Southeast has helped politicize Kurdish women and promote gender equality in the region, participants at a women's conference heard earlier this week.

Kurdish women and children have been politically active because the state has “produced [political] awareness” through its oppression of them, said Dilek Kurban, a columnist for daily Radikal.

Gender discrimination is pervasive and pernicious, and it remains the case that, to varying degrees, women and girls do not enjoy equal access to resources, opportunities or political power in any region of the world.

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Welcome to Women, War & Peace's podcast series with our host, Amy Costello. Each week, Amy will be talking to people who have responded creatively to the plight of women living in conflict zones.

According to a recent study carried out by Transparency International, Somalia was deemed to be the most corrupt nation in the world. The economic and political instability of Somalia has made it the site of many human rights violations, particularly against women. Females are underrepresented in the workforce as well as education.

Leymah Gbowee is central to the Liberian women's peace movement which contributed to ending years of bloody civil war. She is now executive director of the Women, Peace and Security Network, WIPSEN-Africa. In the award-winning documentary "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," she recounts how Liberian women moved from desperation to anger and finally to breakthrough:

Carolyn McAskie had a long and distinguished career with the United Nations, her positions including Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) for Humanitarian Affairs, ASG for Peacebuilding and Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Peacekeeping Operation in Burundi. Prior to working for the UN, Ms. McAskie worked with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

In March 2006, code Pink invited eight Iraqi women to the U.S. to speak about their experiences under U.S. invasion and occupation. Two of the women had their entire families killed by U.S. troops. They were denied visas on the grounds they did not have sufficient family to guarantee they would return to Iraq.

single word is on the tight, pencil-lined lips of women here. You'll hear it spoken over lunch at a women's leadership conference in a restaurant off busy Al Nidal Street, in a shade-darkened beauty shop in upscale Mansour, in the ramshackle ghettos of Sadr City. The word is ''himaya,'' or security.

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I'd like to thank Becky Norton Dunlop of The Heritage Foundation and Michelle Easton of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute for inviting me to speak with you today about the U.S. government's approach to the role women can play in transitions to democracy.