Clinton has been the face of second-wave feminism for nearly her entire career. She is a Baby Boomer who came up through the American university system and fought her way—as a lawyer, senator, and secretary of state—to the top of one male-dominated career after another. Clinton has embodied, as Namara Smith put it in an essay in n+1, the ideal of “women’s liberation from traditional forms of authority through participation in the paid workforce.” She is a pathbreaker whose accomplishments and accolades were supposed to clear the way for others to follow.
The problem with this kind of feminism is that it focused too strongly on putting women in positions of power—on elevating them to the elite, which would then redound to the benefit of all women down the economic ladder. Every female law firm partner, every woman CEO, was a victory for the cause. Ironically, in these anti-elitist times, Clinton was damned for following the very steps that were deemed necessary for a woman to put herself in a position to run for president, as Traister noted in her essay. But in its gaudiest form, this animating principle only made Clinton seem out of touch on the campaign trail: a millionaire hanging out with other rich and famous women like Lena Dunham and Katy Perry. It was not entirely clear whether Clinton breaking the glass ceiling would break it for all of us. Even her campaign slogan—I’m With Her—suggested it was all about the triumph of one person.
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There is also the question of framing. Clinton’s feminist push never quite deviated from the idea that benefits should only be doled out to those who work. This is an especially damaging notion for women, many of whom shoulder an outsized amount of informal labor—child care, household chores, elder care—that is often not recognized as “work” in the eyes of the market. Take, for example, Clinton’s original college plan, which required students to work ten hours a week—to have “skin in the game”—to receive benefits.
She also struggled with the legacy of her husband’s welfare reform bill, which, possibly more than any other piece of legislation, codified a division between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor women. During the campaign, Clinton could only muster a milquetoast rejection of the bill, stating that “we need to take a hard look at it again.”...
