Hillary Clinton stated last night: “Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone. The first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee.”
LIZA FEATHERSTONE, lfeather@panix.com, @lfeatherz
Featherstone is editor of the just-released book False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Contributors include Laura Flanders, Moe Tkacik, Rania Khalek, Medea Benjamin, Frances Fox Piven and Yasmin Nair.
Featherstone said today: “We are asked to celebrate the breaking of glass ceilings this week, as the possibility of a female president is hailed as long-overdue feminist triumph? But just what kind of a feminist is Hillary Clinton?”
She has written: “If feminism only concerns itself with the women at the very top of our society, it’s not feminism at all. It’s just elitism. …
“Clinton’s biggest policy contribution as first lady of the United States was in the area of health-care reform. There she played a critical role in narrowing the national policy discourse — by disavowing a single-payer system, which would lower costs and ensure that everyone could have access to care, as in Canada. … This is a feminist issue. As the Our Bodies Ourselves organization — authors of the indispensable women’s health book of the same name — pointed out in 2009, single-payer health care (also recognizable to U.S. policy wonks as Medicare for All) is the only system in which health care is independent of employment or marriage, both critical considerations, especially for women.”
Featherstone also wrote “Voting for Hillary Because of Her Gender Doesn’t Make You a Good Feminist — Bernie’s Record Is Better,” which states: “Sanders is better than Clinton not only on economic issues, but also on reproductive choice and gay rights. …
“[Clinton was] the first (and at the time, only) woman on the board of Walmart, a company that has systematically discriminated against its low-wage female employees for decades. As the largest private employer in the nation, Walmart employs 1.4 million people in the U.S. and 2.2 million worldwide. Although the company boasts a majority female workforce of ‘associates’ (making it the largest employer of women in the country), it’s a notoriously wretched company for women, built on horrifying labor practices worldwide, including sweatshops overseas, wage and promotion discrimination, wage theft, sexual harassment, cuts to hours, wrongful termination, and abysmal benefits and pay.”
Featherstone’s books include Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement and Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Rights at Wal-Mart.