Simply breaking the glass ceiling, once a cherished goal of all feminists, has lost much of its appeal, especially after seven years of the Bush Administration. Over the course of his presidency, George W. Bush has appointed women to some of the most prominent positions in his Administration--all the while working to undermine women's rights across the board. So it is that we witnessed a fierce assault on women's reproductive rights even as Condoleezza Rice became the first African-American woman to make Secretary of State.

Opting for Edwards or Obama--who are often perceived as more liberal--becomes an attractive proposition for feminists who believe "gender is not the only thing, not even the most important thing in feminism," as Center For New Words program director Jaclyn Friedman puts it. "Hillary's not my friend. She's not actually progressive. The fact that she's a woman is an unfortunate red herring." Feminist principles may be better served, she claims, by electing a truly liberal candidate who will move us further toward a more progressive and therefore more equitable future--an imperative that feels all the more urgent after eight years of Bush. "Things are so bad in this country, and the person we elect is going to be so important," she says. "The whole put-a-woman-in-the-White House seems too abstract and theoretical, a middle-class luxury."

To be fair, the women and the organizations supporting Hillary are hardly advocating a "vagina litmus test." As Gandy points out, NOW has supported male candidates in the past and is now backing Clinton because of "a demonstrated history" of her commitment to feminist ideals. Even Laura Liswood, co-founder of the White House Project, which is dedicated to putting women in office, fully embraces the idea that women should vote their politics rather than their gender, "if the choice is between a woman who doesn't represent you at all and a man who does."

But Liswood cautions against undervaluing what she calls "the power of the mirror, of knowing who it is we can be by who it is that we see." By becoming the first female President of the United States, Liswood says, Hillary would "change the whole memory scan of young people, in terms of...what leaders look like." Even Condoleezza Rice, reviled as she may be for her conservative views, has done her bit for gender equality simply by virtue of the position she occupies. "It's an important social progression. You can't write these women off just because we highly disagree with them," says former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton, who now heads the Center for the Advancement of Women. "It moves us toward a time when we can attack someone like her because of what she stands for and not because she is black or a woman, because we already know that the country won't go up in smoke because we had an African-American woman from Alabama as Secretary of State."

Clinton's supporters also argue that women candidates are unfairly subjected to higher standards, especially by women themselves. It's why antiwar feminist organizations like CodePink are less likely to give her a pass for her Iraq vote than they would, say, John Edwards. Explaining the reasoning behind their "bird-dog Hillary" campaign to The Nation, founder Medea Benjamin wore her double standard on her sleeve: "You expect more of a woman."

When it comes to presidential politics, this double standard also works in subtler ways. "There's not one man of either party who is at the top of the race right now who, if he were a woman, would be taken seriously," says White House Project's Marie Wilson. "We wouldn't tolerate the lack of experience or the marital history [of Rudy Giuliani]. If Obama were a woman, and I don't care how articulate or wonderful, we'd be telling her that she didn't have enough experience." Or, as Susan Estrich wrote in her 2005 book, The Case for Hillary Clinton: "Imagine if Hillary weren't a woman. She'd simply be the best-qualified candidate, with absolutely everything going for her.... If she were a he--Harry Rodham, let's say--the Democratic Party would be thrilled." Of course, come 2007, the party establishment is suitably enthused about Clinton. And for their part, progressive feminists would say that their problem with Hillary Clinton is not that she is a woman but that she has turned out to be no better than Harry Rodham.

Still, there's no question that Clinton bears an extra burden, not least because her victory would represent such a historic breakthrough. "The fantasy was that the first woman President would be someone who would turn the whole lousy system inside out and upside down. Instead the first significant woman contender is someone who seems to have the system down to a fine art," wrote Quindlen in her column.

Yet most feminists recognize that the chance of a true-blue lefty becoming the first female President is about as likely as that proverbial snowball's. Much as we like to bemoan our nation's backward ways in matters of female leadership, the kind of women who actually make it to the top in other parts of the world--leaving aside Chile's Michelle Bachelet--are cut from the same cloth as their male counterparts. Susan Douglas may accuse her of epitomizing "the Genghis Khan principle of American politics," but Hillary Clinton is not a patch on dear old Maggie Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, and she's definitely left of Germany's Angela Merkel.

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