Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the first speech of her presidential candidacy to highlight women's struggle for equality in a sign of a theme to come throughout her campaign.
Clinton tied the issues of equal pay and paid maternity leave to the nation's growth during a speech in Manhattan before the Women in the World Summit,
USA Today reported.
"When women are held back, our country is held back. When women get ahead, everyone gets ahead," she said. She argued that if women participated in the workforce at the same rate as men, there would be a 10 percent increase in U.S. economic growth by 2030.
"Think of what that would mean in terms of rising wages and more opportunities."
Clinton used personal anecdotes to illustrate her remarks. She talked of the difficulty her mother Dorothy Rodham had growing up, having been forced to work as a maid at age 14.
She made mention of her baby granddaughter several times. And she also used anecdotes from her time on the campaign trail, mentioning a woman in New Hampshire who went back to work because her Social Security income was not enough to live on.
"It's hard to believe that in 2015 so many women still pay a price for being mothers. It is also hard to believe that so many women are also paid less than men for the same work, with even wider gaps for women of color," Clinton said, according to
The Daily Beast.
"Our mothers and sisters and daughters are on the front lines of all of these battles," Clinton said. "But these fights are not just women's fights. These have to be America's fights and the world's fights. We have to take them on, we have to win them together."
Clinton also criticized Republican candidates for wanting to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, for their support for deporting illegal immigrants "rather than risk the ire of talk radio," and those who chose to "play politics" with the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general, USA Today reported.
"It isn't leadership, it's not going to create a single job, raise anyone's wages or strengthen our families," she said.
Clinton has spoken to the group every year since its inception in 2010. "I wanted to be here regardless of what else I was doing," she said.