Hillary Clinton says she finds continual pushback against women in workplace 'stunning'

Former presidential candidate speaks with former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard in London

(Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton has spoken about the way in which “deeply embedded” sexist attitudes continue to negatively impact girls and women, despite the progress that has been made in the past two decades.

The former presidential candidate and first lady was speaking with former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard as part of King’s College London’s new World Questions event series.

During their conversation, the political figures discussed the continual prevalence of prejudicial attitudes towards women, recalling how much has changed in society since Clinton delivered her famous “women’s rights are human rights” speech at a United Nations conference in Beijing in 1995.

Clinton stated that while a lot of progress has been made in “knocking down legal barriers”, society still struggles with “continuing attitudes about what’s appropriate or not”.

“There is a bit of pushback going on in some parts of the world right now,” the former US secretary of state stated, going on to reference issues that women in the workplace have been facing in Japan as of late.

Clinton explained how in Japan, “a very modern and industrialised country”, women were recently informed by the country’s labour department that their employers may require them to wear heels as part of their work attire.

Last week several companies in Japan announced a ban on women wearing glasses, as some retailers reportedly said shop workers who wore glasses left customers with a “cold impression”.

“So despite the legal progress there continues to be some pushback and it is a bit stunning,” Clinton said.

The Gutsy Women co-author also referenced a recent report conducted by a corporation in the US that conducted seminars for employees, which emphasised the disparity between the way in which men and women are perceived in the workplace.

Clinton explained that greater attention was placed on the way female employees look, while for the male employees the focus was on the way they act and present themselves.

Meanwhile, language that was “very unselfconsciously used” stated that in the workplace “women should be cheerful and men should be assertive”.

“This is 2019. You can be both cheerful and assertive I think,” Clinton stated, prompting laughter from the King’s College London audience.

“So we still face a lot of these deeply embedded attitudes that are then internalised by girls and women, which often act as artificial barriers for a lot of women’s aspirations and the larger society’s expectations,” she continued.

During her discussion with Gillard, Clinton also spoke about the threats female politicians face online and in real life, the danger of deepfaking in political campaigns and the way in which social media became both an “amazing way to bring people together” and “a platform for hate and disinformation”.

The former US presidential candidate said she takes the threats made against female politicians “very seriously”, referencing the death of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by extreme right-wing terrorist Thomas Mair in June 2016.

“It is fuelled by these online vile attacks that are out there but it also breaks into the real world,” Clinton said.

While recently speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Clinton explained why the late Margaret Thatcher was omitted from her latest book Gutsy Women, which was co-authored by her daughter Chelsea Clinton.

Clinton stated that Thatcher didn’t fit into their definition of “really knocking down barriers for others and trying to make a positive difference”.