Learn English Priyanka Chopra The Full Power of Women Speech with BIG subtitles

good afternoon and thank you and wow I

am so privileged and so honored to be

sharing this afternoon with all of you

and these incredibly amazing women that

are being honored today I’d like to

extend my congratulations to each one of

you Octavia

Michelle Kelly Patty and all 50 women

that have been included in the impact

report your achievements not just

inspire me but also so many others to

work harder to be better and to make a

dent wherever we can so I’m very very

proud to be standing alongside of you so

in life you know there are moments when

you stop and ask yourself how did I get

here like why am i standing here well

this is definitely one of those moments

for me and I find myself going back to

the beginning back to my roots I was

born to incredible parents amazing

parents who served as doctors in the

Indian Army I was the first born and as

far back as I can remember I made my

parents very proud and happy 99% of the

time okay slight exaggerations of

personal achievements are allowed from

time to time don’t you think

my brother was born a few years later

and even then nothing changed for me

we were both given equal opportunities

and I want to emphasize this I want to

really emphasize this for you because I

don’t think a lot of people might

understand that being equal might seem

very normal but where I come from India

and a lot of developing countries around

the world more often than not this is an

exception it’s actually a privilege my

first experience of the glaring

disparity between boys and girls came at

a very very young age I grew up in a

middle-class family with extremely

philanthropic parents who constantly

reminded me and my brother how lucky we

were and how giving back to those who

were less fortunate was not a choice it

was a way of life simple I was seven or

eight years old when my parents started

taking me on these visits in a traveling

clinic to developing communities around

and villages around the city that we

lived in called Verrilli we were packed

into this ambulance and would my parents

would provide free medical care to

people who couldn’t afford it my job at

the age of eight was assistant

pharmacist so I would count all the

medicines put them in an envelope and

give it out to patients and I really

took my job very seriously very

seriously but the more I went on these

expeditions the more I began to notice

the simplest things that distinguished a

boy from a girl or a man from a woman

for example girls were pulled out of

school when they hit puberty because

they were considered ready for marriage

and babies that’s 12 and 13 while boys

still enjoyed their childhood or basic

human rights such as health care were

denied just because they were women let

this let’s call this whole experience

trigger number one for me fast forward a

few years and many many triggers in

between like a producer-director for

example early on in my career I must

have been about eighteen or nineteen

telling me that if I didn’t agree to the

ridiculous terms or painfully low salary

in his movie that he would just replace

me because girls are replaceable in the

entertainment business that was a

memorable one made me decide to make

myself irreplaceable

but I think what really moved the needle

for me and ultimately led me to create

the Priyanka Chopra foundation for

health and education and around the same

time partner with UNICEF was an

encounter with my housekeepers daughter

about 12 years ago I came home from set

early one day and she was sitting in my

library reading a book and she must have

been eight or nine years old and I knew

she loved reading so I asked her I was

like this is I mean it’s a weekday why

aren’t you in school and she said oh I

don’t go to school anymore

so I went and asked her mother and I

said you know why isn’t she in school

and her mom said that her family

couldn’t afford to send her and her

brothers to school so they chose the boy

the reason she would eventually get

married and it would be a waste of money

I was completely blown and it shook me

to my core eventually I decided to cover

the cost of her education so that she

could continue to learn because

education is a basic human right

and a huge necessity especially today

from that point on I was determined to

make a difference in as many children’s

lives as I could in whatever big or

small way that I could contribute

there’s a really really beautiful quote

that I read recently and I think it’s

absolutely appropriate to say to explain

what I’m trying to say today the hand

that rocks the cradle the procreator the

mother of tomorrow a woman

shapes the destiny of civilization such

is the tragic irony of fate that a

beautiful creation such as a girl child

is today one of the gravest concerns

facing humanity girls have the power to

change the world it is a fact and yet

today girls are more likely than boys

never to set foot in a classroom despite

of all the efforts and progress made

over the last two decades more than I’m

just gonna give you a stack more than 15

million girls of primary school age will

never learn how to read or write

compared to 10 million boys primary

school it’s the beginning of our future

over the last 11 years I have witnessed

firsthand the incredible work that

UNICEF does for children around the

world especially victims and survivors

of child marriage displacement war

sexual violence but there is still so

much work to do and for me that is the

fuel to my fire the reason I’m so

committed to this cause and that is

where my passion stems from because I

know that a girls education not just

empowers families but communities and

economies a result of her education we

all do better it’s just as simple as

that as entertainers and influencers

sitting in this room I feel that is our

social responsibility to be a voice for

the voiceless which is why I applaud

each and every woman in this room for

being such a badass

for using your platform and your voice

to contribute to change and for ensuring

that there is not even one lost

generation as long as we are alive I’d

like to thank variety and all of you for

encouraging me and all of us in this

room to keep going and fighting on thank

you so much

[Applause]