Story highlights
Hillary Clinton is the first female presidential nominee from a major political party
She faces Donald Trump in an election where voters are already split along gender lines
Clinton has struggled to win support of young women in her primary campaign
Ninety-six years after women won the right to vote, a woman stands a chance of winning the White House.
Hillary Clinton – former first lady, former U.S. senator, and former secretary of state – has become the first woman to capture a major-party nomination for president, taking another step in a journey that once seemed impossible, but over the last eight years has seemed inevitable.
Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, faces a general election race against Republican Donald Trump that will be seen as a referendum on women in politics, gendered stereotypes about power, and women as a voting bloc. Polls show dramatic splits based on gender, with men going for Trump and women favoring Clinton – even as Clinton has struggled with winning over young female voters in her primary run against Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton clinches Democratic presidential nomination
“I know we have never done this before. We’ve never have had a woman president,” she said Saturday night in Fresno, California. “That is why I want you to understand, that I have spent eight years in the Senate on the Armed Services Committee, four years as secretary of state. I have spent a lot of hours in the Situation Room working to solve some of the hardest problems we face. And I know how hard this job is and how much humility you need to have and how you should actually listen to people who have good ideas.”
On Tuesday, after victories in California and New Jersey, she was embracing the historic nature of her accomplishment.
“This campaign is about making sure there are no ceilings, no limits on any of us and this is our moment to come together,” she said in a nod to her 2008 concession speech, in which she said that campaign had put cracks in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.”
