President Obama told an audience of powerful women to hold him accountable for women's rights. He signed an executive order creating a White House Council for Women and Girls today.

In stating what he wants this council to promote, the president focused on the basics: equal pay (women earn about 78 cents to every dollar men earn), eradicating domestic violence (1 in 4 American women experiences it -- a staggeringly high number) and promoting more females in top positions (just 3 percent of Fortune 500 company leaders are women).

Later this afternoon, over at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama honored five international women's rights activists. In her speech, Clinton hit a little on something I covered in my last post: we may think things are unequal here, but it pales in comparison to what women are still fighting for in other countries.

As a side note, here's a report by NBC News' Andrea Mitchell comparing the two role-model material women (at least in my book) side-by-side:

I'm not really sure what point Andrea was trying to make. I mean, these are two entirely different women after all, so one would expect them to have different interests and goals. I admire Obama's decision to take on nutrition just as much as I give props to Clinton to having taken on that tangled world of health care. Both are essential to Americans' well-being, and often get overlooked in the regular political shuffle.

But I digress. What matters here is that two high-profile politicians (one being the PRESIDENT) gave major recognition to women and their right to equal treatment. However, this is Women's History Month, and sooner rather than later (probably tomorrow) things will go back to the same old struggle for females. Let's relish what we saw today.