On the possibility of a female president: “I don’t see it happening because I don’t see one coming up the line in either party.”

On Hillary Clinton: “People don’t want to elect a feminist because they are not likeable. You have to be likeable to be elected.”

On the other hand: “Sarah Palin is the total package. She’s got a cute husband. She’s got a lot of kids.”

Keep it classy, Phyllis.  From Politics Daily via Jezebel.

“There’s a direct connection between a woman’s ability to plan her family, space her pregnancies, and give birth safely, and her ability to get an education, work outside the home, support her family, and participate fully in the life of her community.

When a girl becomes a mother before she becomes literate, when a woman gives birth alone and is left with a permanent disability, when a mother toils daily to feed her large family but cannot convince her husband to agree to contraception, these struggles represent suffering that can and should be avoided. They represent potential that goes unfulfilled. And they also represent an opportunity to extend critical help to women worldwide and the children who depend on them.

Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do.”

- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
Remarks on the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development

Full transcript here via Jezebel.

This is a cross-post from Laura at adventuresofayoungfeminist.com. Laura is a recent college graduate with a degree in Women’s and Gender Studies.  Right now she is working part-time and just trying to figure her life out.  In her spare time she gets too immersed in movies and television for her own good and blogs at Adventures of a Young Feminist.

If you are interested in cross-posting or guest-posting at feministhemes.com, please contact me with your ideas at misswizzle@feministhemes.com.

Have you ever noticed that politically powerful women are usually referred to by their first name in the media where as most men are not? Well, I have.

Let me first say that I have been thinking about this for a while (which I will discuss in a little bit), but what really prompted this post and this moment in time was an email that I received from one of my best college buds who is now in D.C. This is what the email said:

“I’m really curious as to if you’ve noticed or why you think that women in politics or really any well know women are known by their first name. Hillary, Sonia, Michelle to name a few. I recently read a subtitle in the Economist magazine which was “Judging Sonia” or the movie about Jane Austen “Becoming Jane”. Both great women both only referred to by their first name. I very much doubt that a male justice would get such a headline. Thoughts?”

I’m so glad that someone else picked up on this (though I’m sure many have).

During the latter part of my college career I was a research assistant for a professor doing research on the role of gender and race in the 2008 election. As I was gathering articles I often noticed that Obama and McCain were referred to either by solely their last name or as Senator Obama or McCain. But for Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, the media almost always referred to her as Hillary, very rarely as Clinton or Senator Clinton.

Read the rest of this entry »

“In no society are women treated equally yet. I believe strongly that if women are not full participants in society, the society does not advance the way that it could. And if women are denied their rights, it affects children, families and the entire social structure.”

- Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the third female Secretary of State of the United States.  She has also served eight years as a New York senator and eight years as First Lady of the United States.  She has stated that “it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights,” and is committed to improving the status of women worldwide.