SAN FRANCISCO — A spirited Hillary Clinton took on the Trump administration Tuesday in one of her first public speeches since she lost the presidential election, criticizing the country’s Republican leaders on everything from health care to the shortage of female appointees in top administration posts.

Cracking jokes about her November defeat and her months out of the limelight since, Clinton spoke to thousands of businesswomen in San Francisco, joking there was no place she’d rather be, “other than the White House.”

Without mentioning President Trump by name, Clinton faulted the Republican presidential administration repeatedly, including calling its representation of women in top jobs “the lowest in a generation.”

She rebuked White House press secretary Sean Spicer, again not by name, for hours earlier Tuesday chiding a black woman journalist during a news conference for shaking her head.

“Too many women have had a lifetime of practice taking this kind of indignity in stride,” Clinton said. “I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know all the nasty things they were saying about me. I thought some of them were kind of creative,” she said. “But you just have to keep going.”

Clinton declared herself appalled at a much-circulated photo showing an all-male group of Republican lawmakers last month negotiating women’s coverage in health care legislation, noting a social-media parody of it that showed an all-dog panel deciding on feline care.

Last week’s failure of the Republican health care bill, Clinton told a cheering crowd, was “a victory for all Americans.”

Trump has named four women to his Cabinet, the same number as in former President George W. Bush’s first Cabinet. Trump earlier this week pointed to the work he planned to have his daughter, Ivanka Trump Kushner, do on child care and other issues involving working women and men in her unsalaried role in his administration.