Mirror Mirror Series: Hilary Clinton
The point of this series is to highlight strong women who you may not know anything about. To inspire and to give hope where you may be left wanting. The women we focus on have done courageous, incredible and amazing things to shape the world and blaze trails for each and everyone of us to follow. Today we’re going to look at the most powerful woman in the American political system.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was born on October 26th 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. Unlike many of her fellow politicians, Hillary attended public schools. At age 13 her political aspirations and beliefs were sent reeling when she found evidence of electoral fraud against Richard Nixon, and rather than throwing in the towel she instead put her support behind another republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, for the 1964 election. Hillary was, and is, an extremely smart woman graduating in the top 5 percent of her high school class in 1965.
Her college studies were also weighted heavily in political sciences. Her views were once again brought into question with the Vietnam War, she was said to have described herself as “a mind conservative and a heart liberal.” But Hillary was to find her fire after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jnr., whom she met in the early Sixties. She organised a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley’s black students to recruit more black students and faculty at Wellesley College.
From here Hillary spent time studying at Yale Law School, and in 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington D.C, and we all know the rest of that story. She married Bill Clinton in Arkansas on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.
From ’75 until the early ’90’s Hillary became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm, gave birth to their daughter Chelsea, and was a advocate for children’s and women’s rights.
As the First Lady of the United States of America, Clinton helped construct the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice, promoted immunisations against childhood illness and through coverage of Medicare gave older women the opportunity to receive mammograms to detect breast cancer. Not to keep things for women only she also helped get extra funding into prostate cancer research.
On January 21, 2009 Hillary Clinton took her oath as President Obama’s Secretary of State. She was in the Whitehouse of her own accord. Now things were going to get a little interesting as she had the platform to empower women globally, not just in her own back yard.
Mostly her role as Secretary of State was as a diplomat. She managed to ruffle a few feathers by speaking frankly about freedom of information, equality of same sex couples, and women’s rights. One of the highlights had to have been meeting with with Burmese leaders as well as opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and sought to support the 2011 Burmese democratic reforms.
Hillary’s last day as the Secretary of State for the United States government was on February 1 2013, and became a fully private citizen for the first time in thirty years. She wishes to stick to her philanthropic ventures, public speaking and writing more on her biography.
The world needs more women with her drive and intelligence. Makes me wonder if she’d take another swing at being the first American female President.
Soucre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
