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]