Hillary Clinton’s struggle to attract young female voters as she aims for the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” is facing renewed scrutiny as she tried to make an impact in the New Hampshire primary.  Related: Female voters voice deep division over Hillary Clinton: 'Passion is everything'  As voters started turning out on a snowy election day in New England, polls showed dwindling support for the former secretary of state among women of all ages, at the same time that a substantial share of young Democrats say they support Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The state is expected to hand him a decisive victory.  Clinton’s problems in galvanizing young women were starkly exposed when a feminist icon and a female trailblazer made separate comments admonishing them for flocking to Sanders.  Gloria Steinem, the author and activist, told HBO’s Bill Maher that women “get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’” Madeleine Albright, the country’s first female secretary of state, told Clinton supporters: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”  Steinem apologized on her Facebook page while Clinton defended Albright’s remark as “lighthearted but very pointed”.  But the backlash underscored a generational rift among women and self-described feminists that the Clinton campaign has struggled to bridge.  “I was appalled,” said Erin Matson, the co-founder of a grassroots reproductive rights organization called Reproaction. “Feminism is about respecting the agency of women, and to insinuate that people can’t hold thought-out opinions that aren’t your own is just dramatically insulting.”  She noted that during the backlash from young women, she saw a small but vocal group of younger women join the fray to defend Steinem and Albright. Still, she added: “You can be a feminist and support Bernie Sanders.”  Matson, 35, previously worked with the National Organization for Women, one of the legacy groups to emerge out 1960s feminism, which group campaigned for Clinton in 2008. Her new group, Reproaction, does not make endorsements.  “There is a trend within the women’s movement of older women – not all older women but a vocal contingent – pretending either that young feminists don’t exist, that they don’t know what’s going on, or that they take for granted the increased freedoms we do have that came from the hard work of an earlier generation of feminists,” she said. “And that’s just not true.”  Steinem and Albright’s comments, Matson said, immediately called to her mind a similar remark that the Democratic National Committee chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, made in January. “Here’s what I see: a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v Wade was decided,” Wasserman Schultz told the New York Times Magazine.  On the campaign trail, the Sanders team is downplaying the weekend’s controversy. But the remarks are percolating on their own, all the way to the finish line in America’s first primary.  “I did not react very positively to that,” said Kathleen Fitzpatrick, 64, a faculty member at Daniel Webster community college. “I consider myself a feminist. However, I believe that men candidates can support women’s interests as well as women candidates.”  Clinton made a poor showing among young women in Iowa. In last week’s caucuses, an NBC exit poll found that Clinton won among all Democratic women by 11 points. But young women, by all accounts, broke sharply for Sanders. A CBS entrance poll found that 86% of women under the age of 30 planned to vote for the Vermont senator when they walked in the door.  Ahead of the New Hampshire vote, the Clinton campaign deployed the “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit” – a group of mostly female senators – to stump for her in the state where she won the 2008 primary against Barack Obama. Senator Jeanne Shaheen was working the cafeteria with Clinton on Monday in Manchester, and Clinton has spoken more readily about her experiences as a woman and made key policy announcements on the issue of abortion in recent weeks. Bill Clinton this week made his strongest remarks of the campaign cycle, calling out Sanders supporters for sexism.  Related: Young women are feminists – but that doesn't mean they'll vote Hillary Clinton  The latest polls are split over whether Clinton will win or lose women of all ages by the high single digits. And Sanders once again has the overwhelming support of young and some middle-aged voters. Boston Herald and UMass/7News polls released on Sunday found that Sanders leads voters between the ages of 18 and 34 by 35-, 54-, and even 66-point margins.  A Boston Globe poll of New Hampshire Democrats found that Clinton voters were more likely than Sanders voters to consider themselves feminists. The voters who are most enthusiastic about Sanders, however, are just as likely to consider themselves feminists as the most ardent Clinton supporters.  The two states do not represent the inevitable direction of the race. Democrats in both states are mostly white, and Clinton enjoys greater support than Sanders among minority voters, especially black voters. Nationwide, a USA Today/Rock the Vote poll has found only half of Democratic and independent young women favor Sanders over Clinton.
Polls continue to raise questions about a generational divide amid concerns over controversial comments by Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem