By Tom Ashbrook.

2007 opened with a burst of American women in the spotlight. Oprah – flanked by Mariah Carie, Tina Turner, and Mary J. Blige – ladeling out millions for young girls in Africa, saying “the future is so bright for them it burns my eyes.”

Nancy Pelosi, grandchildren at her side, lifting the gavel as the first female Speaker of the House and celebrating a remarkable first in American history.

But overall, even now, women make up just 16 percent of the U.S. Congress. And globally, in a world of conflict, women are still, starkly, the second sex when it comes to power.

Would it be different if they weren’t?

This hour On Point: a global roundtable of women in the thick of it – on women and power.

Guests:

Swanee Hunt, Director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard’s JFK school, President of Hunt Alternatives, former ambassador to Austria, and author of the recently-released memoir, Half-Life of a Zealot

Betty Achan Ogwaro, a member of parliament in the government of southern Sudan, president of the Southern Sudanese Women Parliamentarian, and the chair of the Southern Sudanese Women Caucus

MIshkat al-Moumin, former minister of the environment in the interim Iraqi government and current Futrell Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute, and founder of Women and Environment Organization in Iraq

Sarita Giri ,Central Committee Member of the Nepal Sadbhawana party (Anandi Devi), and executive chairperson of the Center for Women and Politics (CWAP) which, with a coalition of eight political party women leaders, is working to project and implement women’s vision of a democratic Nepal.