Hillary Clinton: Women in Public Need to Grow Thick Skin

By Night Editor  |  July 22, 2014 | 2:40pm
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton treated the Internet to a Q&A while visiting some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley.

As part of her book tour for Hard Choices, Clinton stopped by Silicon Valley on Monday, touring Google, Facebook and Twitter headquarters. She sat down at Twitter to answer questions from the #AskHillary hashtag in a forum moderated by Katie Stanton, Twitter’s vice-president of global media and former Clinton staffer in the State Department. Via Cat Zakrzewski at Tech Crunch:

Clinton’s Q&A, which Twitter live streamed on YouTube from its San Francisco headquarters, kicked off with several questions about women’s rights. Twitter hosted members of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit aiming to close the gender gap in STEM jobs, in the front of the audience, who cheered and screamed that they loved Clinton as she entered the room.

“Let’s give Girls Who Code a big round of applause. That’s great,” Clinton said.

Clinton answered questions posed in the #AskHillary tag, the first of which came from activist Malala Yousafzai, according to The Age:

Yousafzai had used the hashtag #AskHillary to ask what the world would look like when there were more woman leaders and heads of state.
[Clinton] said more women leaders would make a difference in the world, and they would be able to lend support to people like [Yousafzai], of whom she was a big fan.

Clinton also answered some questions from some celebrity tweeters:

Clinton responded to Washington’s tweet by saying women in the public arena should “grow skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros,” borrowing a phrase from Eleanor Roosevelt.

“I have certainly, as you can tell, have had to learn how to do that,” she said. “There’s a lot of good moisturizers I can tell you about if you’re interested.”

While at Twitter headquarters, Clinton took time to discuss the impact of social media and its drawbacks. Via Mashable:

The former Secretary of State also laid out some lofty expectations for the future of social media, an area she hopes will mature over time. “We have a lot of people communicating, but they’re not listening and they’re not looking for common ground that they could occupy together,” she said. “It is a fact of social media right now that instead of an opportunity.”
Clinton added that she hopes people will someday use social media for “real conversation” and “reconciliation,” and not just for arguing and bickering over differences.

Here is the full video of Clinton at Twitter headquarters:

Image via Getty.

 
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