If she does make history by becoming America’s first woman President, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton plans to give women a 50 per cent representation in her Cabinet.
Right now, there are only four women in President Barack Obama’s 15-member Cabinet.
“I am going to have a Cabinet that looks like America, and 50 per cent of America is women,” Clinton said in response to a question at a town hall event on the eve of Tuesday’s primaries in five East Coast States that she aims to sweep and get closer to sealing the Democratic nomination.
Clinton made the commitment on equal representation for men and women in her Cabinet when asked if she would match a pledge that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made on this score during his own election campaign and has since fulfilled it.
Women happen to be Clinton’s main support base and policies relating to women’s advancement have been a key part of her campaign.
“I’ve devoted a lot of my public life to advocating for women’s rights being human rights and making the case that we have to do everything we can, through laws, regulations, culture, to change the still-existing stereotypes that hold women back,” she said at the town hall, hosted by MSNBC.
“I think it’s also really important to recognize that we have made progress but we are still a long way from where we need to be. I know that if you look at pay, for example, equal pay is still a problem, and it’s a problem that gets worse as you get older,” she said, stressing that pay parity has got to be accomplished finally.
Polls have put Clinton in the lead over Senator Bernie Sanders in the five States holding their primaries on Tuesday, notably the big ones Pennsylvania and Maryland, where she is leading by 16 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. She has smaller leads in the other three — Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware.
Increasingly confident of sewing up the nomination, Clinton has started shifting the focus of her campaign attacks to Republican front-runner Donald Trump, portraying him as a jet-setter who is out of touch with ordinary Americans.
“If you want to be president of the United States, you’ve got to get familiar with the United States,” Clinton said at a campaign event in Delaware, adding: “Don’t just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of, get on that big jet, and go back to you know your country club house in Florida or your penthouse in New York.”
Clinton put it to Trump: “Come out of those towers named for yourself and actually talk and listen to people. You know, at some point, if you want to be president of the United States, you gotta get familiar with the United States. You gotta spend time with Americans of all sorts and backgrounds in every part of our country.”