The fight for equal rights for women died during Bill Clinton’s two terms as president of the United States, according to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
“Feminism sort of died in that period,” she said Monday in an interview with Yahoo News’ Katie Couric. “Because the feminists had to come along with Bill Clinton’s retrogressive behavior with women in order to protect the progressive policies for women that Bill Clinton had as president.”
The former president not only engaged in scandalous extramarital behavior during his time in the White House, but he also dragged his wife and the women who worked for him into it by compelling them to defend him, Dowd argued.
“Bill Clinton had [Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright and [Secretary of Health and Human Services] Donna Shalala come out and say he was telling the truth on Monica,” Dowd said. “And so all of these amazing, accomplished women that worked around him were kind of called to support him, and it’s almost a class issue, because they would put these women down on class or, in Monica’s case, they would say she’s a delusional stalker.”
The columnist’s comments come amid a bitter presidential election season in which the GOP nominee, Donald Trump, has threatened to go after the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, with her husband’s many sex scandals.
“I know that Hillary’s campaign says that, you know, it’s old, and we shouldn’t be paying any attention. But I do think feminism died a little bit,” Dowd said Monday.
In retrospect, Dowd argued, defending Bill Clinton’s behavior in order to preserve his supposedly pro-woman policies was a pretty bad deal, and feminists deserve better.
“You shouldn’t have to have that kind of Faustian deal,” Dowd said.
