"I don't think they're piling on because I'm a woman. I think they're piling on because I'm winning," Clinton told reporters after filing paperwork to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.
"I anticipate it's going to get even hotter, and if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I'm very much at home in the kitchen," she said.
The New York senator's comments came three days after a televised debate in which her six male opponents challenged her character, electability and apparent unwillingness to answer tough questions.
The Clinton campaign reacted strongly to what it called "piling on." One fundraising e-mail it sent out called her "one tough woman" and decried the "six on one" nature of the debate criticism. Clinton herself referred to the "all boys club of presidential politics" in a speech at Wellesley College Thursday.
The complaints haven't deterred her rivals. On Friday, John Edwards told a campaign audience in South Carolina that Clinton hasn't been candid with voters.
"Since the debate, we've continued to hear spin, smoke and mirrors - the same kind of double talk
- to get away from the very serious issues that are in front of us in this campaign," he said.
And in a television interview, Barack Obama, who is black, said he doesn't assume that tough questions he's asked are racially motivated.
"We spent, I think, the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues and I didn't come out and say look I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage," Obama told NBC's "Today" show.
On the day she made her candidacy official in the leadoff primary state, Clinton was pressed anew on topics raised in Tuesday's debate.
On the thorny topic of granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Clinton said she generally supported efforts by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and others who have tried to address public safety questions in absence of federal immigration reform.
Last weekend, Spitzer announced a plan backed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to give licenses with limited privileges to some undocumented workers.
"I don't know all the details," Clinton said, adding that the issue was going to be hard to resolve.
"We've had, now, seven years of an administration that saw things in black and white, yes and no, up and down. I think it's time we actually had a conversation with the American people," she said.
