Girls in developing countries still face many significant impediments to getting a good education. That's why Michelle and Barack Obama launched the Let Girls Learn initiative in the spring of 2015. The initiative seeks to address the cultural problems that impede women from receiving secondary education in certain countries. Michelle Obama traveled to the Middle East last fall to speak about some of these problems. The initiative led to the creation of STEM education for women in Rwanda and also partners with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce the spread of HIV amongst young women.

In October 2016, the Obama administration announced the commitment of another five million dollars towards the initiative's objectives, which the President hopes will outlast his administration.

In August 2016, Obama published an essay in the women's magazine Glamour, describing why he identifies as a feminist. Much of his reasoning is that he is the father of daughters, an often-cited but sometimes frustrating reason to believe in women's rights — women, after all, do not need to be related to a man in order to matter. Still, his imperfect essay is still important. He rightly mentions that gender stereotypes unfairly confine all Americans, not just women. In the essay, he concluded that feminism is about the idea that "when everybody is equal, we are all more free."

During the United State of Women Summit last June, Michelle Obama didn't hold back. In a discussion about women's rights with Oprah Winfrey, Michelle addressed how men can help promote gender equality:

Be better at everything. Be better fathers. Good lord, just being good fathers who love your daughters and are providing a solid example of what it means to be a good man in the world, showing them what it feels like to be loved. That is the greatest gift that the men in my life gave me.

The first piece of legislation that newly-elected President Obama signed in 2009 was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in order to make it easier for women to sue their employers for wage discrimination.

Obama's White House helped to fund key research to determine the best ways to address economic problems faced by women of color through a program called Prosperity Together. Its funding will also be used to help these women find job training and affordable childcare.

Obama administration Secretary of State John Kerry launched the U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, which aims to help girls around the world stay in school. The $47 million initiative will prioritize promoting education and preventing practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The Affordable Care Act made it illegal for health insurance companies to charge women higher premiums simply for being women. It also prohibited denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions, which is significant for feminism because pregnancy was often defined as a preexisting condition.

After the leak of the infamous Access Hollywood tape that showed Donald Trump bragging about groping women without consent, Michelle Obama gave a powerful speech that voiced what many American women were thinking:

We thought all of that was ancient history, didn't we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we're hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it. And all of us are doing what women have always done: We're trying to keep our heads above water, just trying to get through it, trying to pretend like this doesn't really bother us maybe because we think that admitting how much it hurts makes us as women look weak.

The It's On Us campaign aims to empower men and women to go from bystander to activist in the prevention of sexual assault on college campuses and elsewhere. The campaign also formed guidelines to help demonstrate to universities how their sexual assault policies should look.

Obamacare requires insurance providers to cover FDA-approved methods of contraception, including the pill, IUDs, and diaphragms. This helps the millions of American women insured through the ACA manage their own healthcare and make their own decisions about family planning.

When Michelle Obama addressed a group of young African leaders in 2014, she made it clear that respect for women is a critical component of any nation's future. "No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens," she said. The most powerful moment of that speech, though, condemned oppression in severe terms:

Any man who uses his strength to oppress women is a coward, and he is holding back the progress of his family and his country.

The first lady has made it a key priority of her work to change global attitudes about the role and capability of women in society.

This fall, President Obama signed into law a list specifying the rights that American rape victims have. This bill of rights includes the right to having evidence collected free of charge, the right to notification about test results, and the right to notification about impending destruction of rape kits, among other things.

One of the most significant women's rights problems in the United States is the enormous size of the rape kit backlog — evidence collected from women who were allegedly raped that has not been tested for a possible match. Eliminating the rape kit backlog could result in thousands of rape convictions, giving peace and justice to victims and preventing new crimes from occurring. Obama earned praise from celebrity advocates like Mariska Hargitay when he committed $45 million dollars to help end the rape kit backlog in the United States.

At a panel hosted by Glamour in 2015, Michelle Obama urged American girls to feel comfortable competing with boys, reminding them that education is more important than teenage romance. However, citing her own experiences, she also noted that women can be educated and competitive and still be successful romantically:

There is no boy, at this age, cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting an education. If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the president of the United States.

"Compete with the boys," she reportedly urged the audience. "Beat the boys."

Even on the eve of his successor's inauguration, Obama is still trying to protect women from what's to come. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides millions of Americans with lifesaving medical care, including cancer screenings and family planning resources. President Obama has vowed to make this promise difficult for Trump to fulfill. Last week, Obama introduced a new federal rule that prohibited discrimination in federal funding against groups like Planned Parenthood. It may not prove to be a totally insurmountable obstacle, but it will protect the organization in the short term.