Albright’s comments came days before the feminist icon Gloria Steinem said during an interview that young women may be supporting Sanders in order to meet “boys”.
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Ms. Albright, who under President Bill Clinton was the first woman to serve as secretary of State, scolded young women who would have the temerity not to vote for Mrs. Clinton, her longtime friend.
The mea culpa comes just three days after Clinton was crushed in the New Hampshire primary – in part by the non-support of women. It’s time for them to extend these insights to Democratic candidates and to stop expecting progressive women to vote for Clinton simply because of her gender identity.
“It’s not done. There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”. However, I find it frustrating that so many people assume that I will support any particular female candidate simply because she, too, identifies as a woman.
I find it deeply upsetting that neither of these women, for both of whom I developed a deep respect during my studies of feminist theories, understand the reasons why younger, progressive and activist women might choose Sanders as their candidate – his stances on college debt or health care, for example, make him appealing.
But Albright writes that she doesn’t want to see future generations of women lose the gains made by women in the past. Make no mistake: I am the first to recognize that having a significant number of women in the room changes the dynamic of any meeting; and I have no doubt that electing Hillary Clinton as president would bring a host of positive changes for women around the world. Those comments sparked a strong backlash, and Steinem aplogized.
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“In a society where women often feel pressured to tear one another down, our saving grace lies in our willingness to lift one another up”, she wrote. “If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied”. She gives women permission to vote based on the issues that “matter most to them”, but then strongly implies “gender equality” should top the list and that Clinton is the only candidate to vote for in that case. “Based on every analysis that I can find by people who are sympathetic to the goal, the numbers don’t add up and many people will be worse off than they are right now”, Clinton said.
