Abstract

Is Bill Clinton A Feminist?

Of all the groups suffering losses under the presidency of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, women rank near the top. Bush, despite promising a kinder, gentler nation, continued the attack on women's rights. The women's movement, now primarily consisting of Washington advocacy groups and their supporters in the Congressional Caucus on Women's issues, has been both diminished and somewhat balkanized as a result. With abortion rights being chipped away, advocates were effectively forced into a narrow one-note strategy of agitating from the outside to keep abortion legal. Although U.S. President William J. Clinton was correctly perceived as being much stronger on women's issues than Bush, his campaign seemed to equate women's rights with abortion rights and little else.