Hillary Clinton has called a sticker depicting teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg being sexually assaulted “misogyny plain and simple.”
The 2016 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate made the comment on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS show on International Women’s Day, Sunday. Clinton used the sticker as an example of what she called appalling “overt misogyny” that persists across the globe.
“I understand that we’re still fighting over climate change — although that seems somewhat absurd to me — but to fight by objectifying and having a picture that demonstrated a level of violence against this young [17]-year-old girl, who has every right to stand up and say, ‘You know world, you’re not doing what needs to be done,’ that’s misogynistic,” Clinton said.
Watch: Greta Thunberg slams EU over climate change bill. Story continues below.
A concerned Alberta resident posted a picture of the sticker on Facebook in late February. It showed a drawing of the back of a nude female with two hands pulling her braided hair from behind. The word “Greta” was written across her lower back, and the name of Alberta oilfield firm X-Site Energy Services was printed boldly at the bottom.
HuffPost Canada spoke to an oil worker who said the sticker was being handed out to workers at oil fields across central Alberta as promotional material to be worn on hard hats.
Thunberg fired back on Twitter, “They are starting to get more and more desperate… This shows that we’re winning.” Canadian politicians spoke out against the sticker, including unanimously passing a motion in the House of Commons to condemn it.
X-Site apologized for the sticker last week, calling it a “careless act” that does not reflect the values of the company or its employees.
Clinton told CNN that despite advances “on paper” such as paid parental leave and child care in some countries, misogyny persists online and through unconscious biases that hold women to a “double standard.”
“We’re OK with allowing our daughters and granddaughters to get an education and compete for great jobs, but there’s still something inside that when a woman says, ‘Wait a minute, I’d like to lead, I’d like to be in charge,’ little alarm bells start to ring,” Clinton said.
“I think the backlash that you see in different places around the world is out of fear and a sense of losing control.”
- Hillary Clinton
She said the current wave of feminism that demands equal rights and accountability for out-of-bounds behaviour is new to society, which is why there’s a backlash.
“Everybody is trying to work this out and make sense of … how do we truly respect and value women in the workplace without objectifying them, or harassing them?” Clinton said.
“I think the backlash that you see in different places around the world is out of fear and a sense of losing control.”