American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears

by Farah Stockman

Eventually, I came to see her as a blue-collar feminist in the tradition of Dolly Parton, who had grown up slopping pigs in rural Tennessee and used her looks, talent, and business acumen to create an empire. That feminism felt radically different from the women’s liberation movement I’d grown up with. Feminists who expected Hillary Clinton to sail to victory on the votes of blue-collar women like Shannon focused heavily on breaking glass ceilings in the professional world: the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company (Katharine Graham of the The Washington Post, 1972); the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O’Connor, 1981); the first American woman in space (Sally Ride, 1983); the first female secretary of state (Madeleine Albright, 1997); and of course, the first female nominee for president of a major political party (Hillary Clinton, 2016).