Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered the closing keynote address keynote Women’s Day on Broadway on Tuesday. In her speech, she pushed for gender equality in all aspects of society including the theater.
“I feel a strong obligation to keep talking about the great unfinished business of the 21st century, namely expanding the rights, opportunities and full participation in every aspect of society by women and girls,” said Clinton, Broadway News reported. “And of course that includes the theater.”
Prior to her arrival at the Women’s Day on Broadway, Clinton said she had a meeting with UN representative and a group of Afghan women. They talked about how to ensure that women’s rights be included in the ongoing peace deal between the Taliban and the U.S.
Clinton also touched on the obstacles women in the U.S. are facing, including those who work in the theater. These include the lack of childcare, inadequate reproductive rights, unpredictable working hours and the lack of paid sick leave.
On top of the tangible obstacles women face, Hillary Clinton also talked about the unconscious bias where decision-makers would often favor men over women, which is often seen in politics. The same trend also operates in the theater world where women seem to have a higher hurdle to pass before they can make their Broadway debuts while “younger and less experienced men playwrights continue to be produced without those accolades.”
“Women are judged for what we have done, while men are praised for what they promised to do,” Clinton said. “But nevertheless, we persist.”
Clinton admitted that theater helped her deal with her defeat in the 2016 elections. “After the catastrophe in November of 2016, my long walks in the woods and glasses of chardonnay got most of the attention, but I also saw a lot of shows, and boy did that help me,” she said.
As a politician, she’s used to taking the center stage but she also revealed that she also loves her role as a member of the audience when it comes to theater shows. “No matter what was happening, there was nothing like sinking into a seat, feeling the excitement and the anticipation as the lights went down and being transported out of our crazy world for at least a little while,” Clinton said. “And it’s really one of my most cherished roles, being an audience member.”
“We need to keep telling our stories,” was Clinton’s message to women in theaters. “We need to keep going because nothing is more important than imagining, and then inventing the future that we want.”