According to CBS News, Hillary Clinton has given women some advice.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a new project called “No Ceilings” with her daughter, Chelsea, and Melinda Gates. During a talk at New York University, Clinton told the students that women in the public eye need to form a thick skin.
I don’t think that’s the best advice, at least not unless it’s worded very carefully. A personal, individual thick skin is no doubt very useful, but a social thick skin is a terrible idea. A social thick skin just treats the status quo, in which women in the public eye are subject to torrents of abuse just because they are women in the public eye. That’s no good. We don’t want to deal with that by telling people to suck it up, just as we don’t want to deal with racism or homophobia or xenophobia that way. We want to deal with it by improving the culture so that it stops happening.