Woman Problem?

What’s With Hillary’s Woman Problem?

Feminists want more than the White House now—and that’s trouble for the first female nominee.

By Jill Filipovic

Does Hillary Clinton have a woman problem? With only a couple of months until a November election that could put the first woman in the White House, the answer, amazingly enough, is yes. It first became clear during primary season, when Bernie Sanders, an old white man from Vermont, startled observers by collecting more support from women under 30 than Clinton. Now, as Clinton faces Donald Trump, a man who has insulted women as pigs and dogs, just over half of registered female voters say they back her, while more than a third say they prefer Trump. When female voters are asked how they feel about Clinton, the most common answer is not “enthusiastic,” but “upset.”

While Trump has publicly and dramatically fractured the Republican Party, the Clinton candidacy has, in a seeming irony, brought out the fractures in modern feminism. During the primaries, a handful of high-profile women—including Madeleine Albright, Lena Dunham and Gloria Steinem—insisted that the fight against sexism is an un-won war, and that putting a woman in the White House remains a crucial goal. But younger feminists, many of them Sanders supporters, reminded us this is not the 1970s or even the 1990s, and that wealthy white female figureheads who promise to shatter glass ceilings don’t automatically get a feminist stamp of approval. The population of American women is more diverse than it’s ever been, and any leader who wants to run as a feminist must speak to their varied needs.

Now that Clinton is the Democratic nominee, many of the more conspicuous fissures have healed, as feminists of most stripes have united around her. But that doesn’t mean they’ve settled for the symbolic victory of having a woman in power. More than just a historic milestone, a Clinton presidency would be a critical test of what “feminism” really means in politics today, and whether the movement’s competing interests can coexist. Would a Clinton presidency focus on the kinds of policies her campaign has already put forward, which emphasize helping women and families? Or would it be about the broader, Sanders-inspired progressive demands like free college and a higher minimum wage that Clinton has now partly folded into her own agenda? Would a woman in the White House bring with her an avalanche of misogynist attacks, subsuming policy debates into an anti-feminist backlash?

For Clinton, being the first woman in the White House—one of the feminist movement’s primary goals for decades—would be in some ways just the start: The real test would be how fully her agenda meets the demands of a feminist base that is often in disagreement.

Clinton would not walk into the Oval Office with built-in support from young female voters, who have grown up outperforming boys in the classroom and seeing women as their professors and doctors (not to mention senators and governors). Her own wealth and race also undermine her appeal: Just as Americans are increasingly nonwhite, so too are feminists; just as being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is increasingly normalized, so too are LGBT folks more visible and vocal in feminist activism. For young women, feminism today must take into account all of these constituencies and elevate the voices of the most marginalized. For all the challenges she’s faced because of her gender, Clinton is not entirely representative of a broad movement in which many women find their particular experiences shaped by their gender and their race and their class, or some other combination.

Nor do all American women see a Hillary Clinton presidency in particular as promising for feminist policy. Her very real achievements as a feminist—that famous 1995 Beijing speech when she declared “women’s rights are human rights,” for one—were long enough ago that few younger voters remember them. Millennials may have been only elementary schoolers when Bill was in office, but the less-than-feminist 1990s Democratic policies—welfare reform, “safe, legal and rare” abortion—are well-known, and deeply despised, by today’s young feminists. Some of us talked about it in women’s studies class. Others lived it, staying silent with shame after ending pregnancies or growing up with mothers who struggled to get by because of those much-touted “welfare to work” provisions that cut aid to many needy families.

Of course, Hillary is not Bill. And she, along with the Democratic Party as a whole, seems to realize that today’s base has changed. Whether thanks to her own inclinations or to pressure from younger feminists (not to mention the female economists, think-tank and nonprofit leaders, lawyers and young staffers on her campaign), Clinton has embraced the most feminist agenda of any nominee in history, helping to normalize the idea of feminism as a major pillar of policy. Even Trump’s daughter Ivanka felt obliged to pepper her speech at the Republican National Convention with standard feminist policy fare, from equal pay for equal work to the importance of reliable child care.

In 2016, abortion as “safe, legal and rare” is no more; Clinton not only wants to keep it safe and legal, but also publicly opposes the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal Medicaid dollars from covering abortion like any other form of health care. While Clinton was on record opposing Hyde in 2008, she was quiet about it; this election season, she’s voiced her opposition at rallies and campaign events. Meanwhile, her plan for government-supported child care is the most progressive and ambitious in a generation: universal pre-kindergarten for every 4-year-old, increased salaries for child care workers, child care scholarships for student-parents, expanded funding for on-campus child care centers, and a cap on middle- and low-income families’ child care spending. It may not resonate with the college-educated Girls viewer who is likely to delay childbirth into her 30s, but the average American woman without a college degree gives birth before she hits 25. For her, this would be a game changer—and, given that gender-based income gaps are exacerbated when women have children, perhaps a great equalizer.

If Clinton can get these and other female-friendly policies passed into law, many feminists will cheer. But others will certainly say it’s too little, especially when she makes the inevitable political compromises. With every policy proposal Clinton puts forth and every bill she signs, she will have to answer not just to her party and the American people, but to women: Is this law feminist enough? Is she looking out for the most marginalized women? Does this do harm to any group of women? One burden of being the first woman is that expectations are outsized, and, as a result, disappointments are greater and judgments are harsher.

Oddly, and lamentably, what might most unite feminists in a Clinton presidency is the ongoing fight, underscored by Albright, Dunham and Steinem, for basic respect for women in the public sphere—a fight on full display in the sexist spectacle of this election season. The most obvious examples come in the comically outsize misogyny on view at Trump rallies, from supporters and from the candidate himself: stickers reading “Life’s a bitch. Don’t vote for one,” T-shirts billing Trump as “finally someone with balls,” crowds shouting, “Lock her up!” as they did at the GOP convention, a tame chant compared to the “kill her” mantra so regularly, and loudly, intoned at the Republican candidate’s gatherings. Then there are the much subtler indignities and prejudices she has faced. Clinton is too loud and sounds too combative, male commentators say. She’s constantly asked why she’s not likable (a concern few seem to have about Trump). She’s told she needs to smile more.

If anything can unite women, sad to say, it might be this sort of crass sexism. Then again, Clinton has a well-documented tendency to drive defensive, and that might turn off the young women she still needs to convert. All of this puts tremendous pressure on Clinton. After all, winning the White House is hardly the end of the road. Just one woman can’t usher in the revolution by herself.