Misogyny 'played role' in election loss: Clinton

Hillary Clinton said Thursday that misogyny "certainly" played a role in her bruising defeat to Donald Trump in last year's US presidential election, giving her first public interview since that shock loss.

"I don't know that there is one answer," she told the Women in the World Summit in New York when asked why a majority of white women voted for a Republican who had boasted of groping women.

"Certainly misogyny played a role, I mean that just has to be admitted," she added.

"I think in this election there was a very real struggle between what is viewed as change that is welcomed and exciting to so many Americans and change which is worrisome and threatening to so many others.

"And layer on the first woman president over that and I think some people, women included, had real problems," she said.

The former Democratic presidential nominee spoke at length, covering a range of issues that included calling on the United States to take out Syrian air fields in the wake of a suspected chemical weapons attack.

"I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people," she said of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.