Young women who don’t support Hillary Clinton were warned in no uncertain terms this weekend by Madeleine Albright: “Just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

The first female secretary of state’s comments might not sit well with the intended audience, though. Surveys show most young women in America do consider themselves feminists, but they’re just not necessarily going to vote for Clinton because of it.

Albright’s comments highlighted an apparent rift between two generations of feminists: those who lived through the second wave of feminism that lasted three decades from the early 1960s onward; and those who, according to Albright, are too young to remember the struggle and think it’s “done”.

But just 16% of American women ages 18 to 35 describe feminism as “outdated”, according to a poll conducted last summer by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post. In fact, the survey found older women were much more likely to hold the views which 78 year-old Albright was criticizing: 33% of women ages 65 and over said feminism was “outdated”. What’s more, those older women were slightly less likely than younger women to even identify with the label feminism – 58% of female respondents in the oldest category described themselves as feminist compared to 63% of women in the 18 to 34 category.

Feminism today Photograph: Washington Post

Clinton is indeed less popular in this demographic. A poll released two weeks ago by NBC News and SurveyMonkey shows that 65% of women ages 18 to 25 say they’re supporting Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton/Sanders polling Photograph: NBC News

There could be a simple explanation for what Albright sees as a paradox: young American women are not letting their feminist values dictate a vote for Clinton in 2016. Last February, Quinnipiac University put the following question to women in swing states:

Hillary Clinton would be the first female president. Does that make you more likely to support Hillary Clinton for president, less likely, or does it make no difference?

The responses were consistent. In Colorado, 74% of respondents said Hillary’s gender would not impact their vote, as did 77% of respondents in Iowa and 76% in Virginia. Those results have clear limitations – they’re not broken down by gender, age and are now a year old. But they do help explain why, despite the fact that most Democrats say they’d like to see a female president at some point in their lifetime, that reason alone is not enough to change the minds of young female supporters of Sanders.

It was those Sanders supporters that Gloria Steinem addressed on Friday when she spoke to talkshow host Bill Maher. Steinem, 81 and one of the most prominent figures of the feminist movement, implied that young American women were simply backing Sanders in order to attract men. Maher appeared taken aback as Steinem remarked, “When you’re young, you’re thinking: Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.”



Ironically, the argument might be made that it’s Clinton who has been pursuing men – they’re an important voting group for her.



Back in 2014, Clinton was 25 percentage points more popular with women than with men according to a poll by the Washington Post. In March 2015, Gallup reached a similar finding that women, including those under 50, were much more likely to have a favorable opinion of Clinton. Clinton’s changing fortunes over 2015 have, in a way, been about her ability to appeal to older Democrats and women without damaging her support with male Democrats.



Polling suggests that Albright and Steinem have misunderstood America’s young feminists. It seems that Clinton’s gender alone is not enough to influence their vote. And, as Twitter accounts like Feminists 4 Bernie show, some young women believe that Sanders will be a better feminist in the White House than Clinton.

