Madeleine Albright: Women Who Don't Vote Clinton Aren't Really Going to Hell

'This was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 13, 2016 12:40 PM CST
Madeleine Albright: Women Who Don't Vote Clinton Aren't Really Going to Hell
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright says she doesn't actually believe women who don't vote for Hillary Clinton are going to hell.   (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other," former secretary of state Madeleine Albright said at a Hillary Clinton event last weekend in New Hampshire. After the line—which she says she's used to great effect a thousand times—went viral for the wrong reasons, she took to the New York Times to explain herself. "I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line," Albright writes. "I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender." She says women are absolutely allowed to disagree with one another politically and vote for whomever they choose.

But Albright writes that she doesn't want to see future generations of women lose the gains made by women in the past. "The battle for gender equality is still being waged, and it will be easier if we have a woman who prioritizes these issues in the Oval Office and if the gender balance among elected officials reflects that of our country," she says. "My hope is that young women like my two granddaughters—those who have lived in a world where Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, who played school sports thanks to Title IX, and who have never had to check “married” or “single” on a job application—will build on the progress we have made. But that will happen only if women help one another." Read her full piece here. (More Madeleine Albright stories.)

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