(CNN) Hillary Clinton slammed what she called "endemic" sexism and misogyny in America during an interview with Fareed Zakaria, which aired Sunday.

Clinton, who was interviewed by Zakaria on his show, "GPS," said sexism was so inherent that she purposely hadn't highlighted her career history of fighting for women's rights when she ran for president in 2016. However, she admitted that with the benefit of hindsight, she "could have tried harder" to do so.

"I'm a middle-class girl from the middle of the country, and so I always struggled with like, OK, so what's my story. And it suddenly dawned on me that I was the beneficiary of these radical changes in, you know, women's rights and opportunities that began in the '60s and continue and that I could have and maybe should have tried harder to tell that story," she conceded.

"I never thought there would be that receptive an audience, " she emphasized.

This was in contrast, she pointed out, to former Presidents Barack Obama and her husband, Bill Clinton, whose stories were more appealing to the public.

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