Philadelphia women reflect on the challenges faced by the first female presidential nominee of a major party – and how she has inspired them

'It's not right': mothers and daughters see own struggles reflected in Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton made much of her relationship with her mother and daughter when she launched her campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2015. A year later, before she took the stage at the 2016 Democratic convention to accept that nomination, she was introduced by her daughter, along with a short, Shonda Rhimes-directed video that delved into her relationship with her mother.

At myriad events in between and since, Clinton has consistently positioned herself as a daughter, a mother and a grandmother – arguably at least as prominently as she has positioned herself as a former first lady, a former US senator and a former secretary of state.

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Mark Penn, an adviser to Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, once told Clinton to de-emphasize her gender because Americans “do not want someone who would be the first mama”; he likely would not recognize the grrl-power campaign Clinton has been running in 2016.

She took his advice, and split the women’s vote with Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries that she eventually lost, while in 2016, by contrast, she has had a consistent, overwhelming lead among women.

Penn, it seems, was ill-informed: perhaps voters don’t want a “first mama”, but many female voters identify with the ways in which Clinton’s relationship with her mother, her daughter and her granddaughter influence her life. And, in what is more than a little problematic for the Trump campaign, they identify with her experiences being a woman in a man’s world, and with being criticized over problems men will never have to face.

In the swing state of Pennsylvania, we asked families of women – Clinton supporters all – to talk about why they support her candidacy and how they identify with her experiences as a woman in the workforce and as a mother and grandmother at home.

Polly Frey, a 67-year-old former stay-at-home mother and current furniture saleswoman in between jobs, lives with her daughter in the Philadelphia exurbs, and said she certainly sees herself in Clinton. “Being a new grandmother, definitely, it makes her more human and more attractive to me, how she would handle things,” she explained. “I worry about so much more now than I did with my kids, because you know what’s going on and you want to prepare them for what’s ahead and hope that they turn out to be even-tempered, moral, generous – all the things you would want in a human, which sometimes we don’t see in some of the candidates.”

Her daughter, Raina Murdock, is an IT professional who just turned 43 and has two children: Dexter, age four, and Meadow, one.

Murdock said, tearing up: “The one thing that I think is kind of cool, Meadow being the age she is, she’s not going to know any different” than that a woman can be president.

“There’s the quote where, it’s like Madeleine Albright’s granddaughter or something saying, ‘Well, isn’t a woman always secretary of state?’ That might be how Meadow feels about the president, and that’s pretty cool.”

“It’ll be second nature,” said Frey.



“She won’t see the limits that we’ve all seen,” replied Murdock.

In the Philadelphia suburbs, Olga McHugh, who left a career to care for her daughters and is now helping to care for her new grandchild, called Hillary Clinton a “daily topic” in conversations with her daughters. She, too, empathizes with how being a grandmother can change your worldview. “As a new grandmother, I understand things a little differently, see things differently now,” she said. “And anyone who’s involved with their children and now is a grandparent, you will look at the future differently. You have to.”

Her daughter Emily Stine, who cut down to working part-time for a healthcare billing company after the birth of her son, was glad to hear Clinton focusing on her family. “I’m glad to hear Hillary talking about her relationship with her mother, and Chelsea and her granddaughter.

“But I don’t understand why we don’t also want every candidate to talk about their relationship with their mother and father and their children and grandchildren,” she added. “It’s just as important for a male candidate as for a female candidate.

“With all women, you end up focusing on: how nice is she?” she continued. “Does she get along with other women? Does she get along with men? Do men like her? Do women like her? It seems totally irrelevant to me in terms of: are you able to work with people in general to get something accomplished?”

Julianna McHugh, who works full-time in early childhood education and part-time with her sister’s company and at the family’s church to make ends meet, said she hated the focus on women’s perceived friendliness. She said that she had had men complain about her lack of a smiling “resting” face since she was a young child, when a male teacher mocked her poker face. “My regular face is not a smile,” she said. “And he was frustrated by this, and infuriated by this, and bullied me.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton hugs her daughter Chelsea Clinton after the first presidential debate. Photograph: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

“It was the most demeaning, horrible thing. And I feel like that would not have been done to a male student.”

Olga, her mother, abhors the same double standard. “I think Hillary – I’m hoping that she – has a good enough handle on the fact that women are complicated, but we can be many facets and be very contributing without smiling our way through and having to wear a certain type of dress.”

In north Philadelphia, Rainah Chambliss, a 43-year-old administrative associate and songwriter, talked about the double standards for men and women with her daughter Aysha Chambliss, a 25-year-old student and receptionist, and her mother, Koker, who called herself an “artistic messenger”.

“Women have done so many great and powerful things throughout history,” said Rainah Chambliss. “But it’s still almost like we have to be domesticated. Even when we get into the White House.

“It’s hard,” she added. “Being a woman and dealing with certain situations, it’s tough to look at.”

“Women are held to a certain standard,” her daughter Aysha said. “It’s not right, but it’s just the way it is, I guess.”

Trump is being held to a lower standard because he is a lower standard

But she thought that having a female candidate for the presidency was progress. “Growing up, I don’t think I ever thought it was possible,” she said. “So to see that it is possible, that now that the sky’s the limit, so to speak, that’s kind of amazing.”



Koker said she was sad that her daughter and granddaughter still faced discrimination because of their gender. “I expected that we would all be seen as equals as we ought to be seen” by now.

“Trump is being held to a lower standard because he is a lower standard” she said. “And he shouldn’t even be running for president.”

Rainah Chambliss agreed. “So Hillary’s the frontrunner, she is the candidate for the Democratic party. She had a husband who had some indiscretions – her husband had some indiscretions – so we’re going to hear about all this stuff played out again.

“It had nothing to do with Hillary herself,” she added, “But it’s going to come up because, ‘Well, why did she stay with her husband?’ or ‘Why didn’t she get upset and go cuss out Monica Lewinsky?’

“Yet we have a Republican candidate who’s been married three times.”

Back in the exurbs, Frey and Murdock had a lot of thoughts about Republicans playing up some of the darker periods of the Clinton marriage. “The stay-versus-go cheating situation,” said Murdock. “Mom lived through that.”

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“I lived through both sides of that,” Frey agreed. “I stayed and stayed and then when I did leave a marriage after 30-some years, one reason I left is I don’t want my kids to think this is OK,” she said, tearing up.

“I certainly don’t like the idea that they’re saying that Hillary’s a pushover, whatever, because she put up with that,” she added. “Everyone has to hear their own drummer and do what works for them.”

Her daughter, Murdock, agreed. “I do think there absolutely are double standards for women. I was talking about her being a stay-at-home mom, and how that was really great, and me being a career person, there are people on both sides of those camps that put the other down.

“It’s like, ‘C’mon, ladies, let’s stop putting each other down,’” she added. “We’ve all made our own choices for our own reasons and there’s nothing wrong with one versus the other. It’s kind of who you are and what’s best for you.”

Olga McHugh, who keenly remembers the social slights she faced when she left the business world to care for her children, said: “We really as a society devalue women that decide to take care of their families or stay home. And that’s carried over to women, whether it’s not-equal pay or whether it’s ‘Well, she can be secretary of state but it’s still not as good as the man secretary of state’.”

Her daughter, Julianna, sees it too. “I hope that having a female president will help bring more respect to all of the occupations that are filled with women who aren’t getting the same respect that a male would, in the same place, doing the same thing.

“It’s never good enough, for some reason, and I don’t know how we change that,” Olga added. “Well, I guess having a woman president will help change that pretty quickly.”