Professional Documents
Culture Documents
If You're For Feminism, Why Is It White?
If You're For Feminism, Why Is It White?
17 May 2019
Most known for her recent 2016 run for presidency in the United States of America, Hillary
Rodham Clinton is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker who was
also the former First Lady when her husband, Bill Clinton, was seated as president. As a democrat,
Clinton holds views which are progressive enough to not be considered repressive or conservative.
Despite losing the presidency in 2016 to Donald J. Trump, Clinton is still seen as a powerful
woman in politics and perceived to be a feminist icon for women across the globe. She has,
American author, going as far as creating a book alongside other radicals and feminists entitled
In order for us to understand the analysis on Clinton’s speech and her style of feminism
that is (not) apparent in the said speech, we first must have a clear definition of what feminism
is—more importantly, what feminism is Clinton missing out on, making her a white feminist. bell
hooks, in her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, she speaks about what being
an authentic feminist entails which is to want “for all people liberation, female and male, from
sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression” (hooks, 1981). For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
her definition of a feminist is “a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality
Mercado 1
of sexes,” (Adichie, 2014) as said in her book We Should All Be Feminists. As said by critics, these
are feminist definitions and attitudes that Clinton does not possess, even as she is a powerful
she discusses her experiences in the public and private sectors of business while, at the same time,
reflecting on women’s societal roles in the workforce and the things one must consider and act on
in order to achieve gender equality, especially in the workforce. In the speech, she encourages