OPINION:
Here we go again. Hillary Clinton is continuing her efforts to pander to women everywhere, most recently in South Carolina where she fashioned a charming southern accent and referred to her hair coloring.
It’s absurd that Mrs. Clinton believes she can win the support of women just because she herself is a woman. While her southern charm and bottle blonde hair may get her far with some women—she certainly won’t win over all.
Just this week she launched her online merchandise store where one could purchase an always fashionable pantsuit tee or a tumbler with the phrase “made from 100% shattered glass.” While Mrs. Clinton is hoping to attract young females with her online merchandise, she will have to do a lot more to win them over and get them excited about her race to the White House.
A recent piece in the National Journal, “What Young Feminists Really Think of Hillary Clinton,” depicted the young feminists of today who grew up with Mrs. Clinton as an icon; now, however, many of them are less than enthusiastic about her candidacy for president.
Interestingly enough many liberal millennial women say that Mrs. Clinton isn’t progressive enough for them but there isn’t another viable candidate so they will throw her their tepid support. This lukewarm and unenthusiastic support should worry Mrs. Clinton—because this should be her easiest base of support. These should be the women orchestrating and attending rallies, but they won’t. If a viable candidate enters the race that is more progressive than Mrs. Clinton, she will quickly lose the liberal female millennial vote—truly a devastating blow to her campaign.
Mrs. Clinton’s biggest issue is the way in which she tries to attract female voters—pandering. As a female, I don’t like being pandered to and used as a political prop.
Hillary Clinton’s war on women rhetoric should be called out for what it is, a sham. Liberals are obsessed with gender disparity, but yet they are the ones objectifying women. This February it was reported by the Washington Free Beacon that Mrs. Clinton paid her female staffers 72 cents for every dollar paid to male staffers. While she was a senator, the median annual salary for a woman working in Mrs. Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man. She can’t have it both ways—insisting that there’s gender discrimination yet not paying her female staffers equal to her male staffers.
As we all know, Hillary Clinton has been an avid champion of women’s equality—but yet recent reports really discredit her record. It has been reported that during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, she accepted foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. Some of these donations came from nations such as Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman which have serious human rights abuses against women. If in fact Mrs. Clinton claims to champion women, she should champion women everywhere and condemn these human rights abuses rather than accept donations.
Why has Hillary Clinton been so quiet on human rights violations against women? Since as she believes there is a phony “war on women,” she should be quick to denounce the real and violent war being waged on women in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Today there are still countries where women have to fight to attend school, are shunned for reading, and cannot vote—that is the true war on women.
Maybe her silence is due to the fact that she would rather accept donations from countries where violence against women is tolerated. Human rights violations should be addressed, especially from someone like Hillary Clinton who has made women’s rights a pillar of her agenda. It seems as though her faux outrage is dishonest and despicable.
It appears as though both conservative and liberal female millennials alike are tired of Mrs. Clinton’s phony talking points. Her dishonesty and inauthenticity just continues to grow the more she appears on the campaign trail. With already tepid support among young liberal female millennials due to her perceived lack of progressivism, she should reconsider her pandering tactics and stop calling herself a champion for women.
Ashley Pratte is a communications consultant in Washington, D.C.
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