What I like most about her, though, is that, while she certainly isn't afraid to be assertive, she doesn't seem to have embraced the supercilious, academic, ball-busting persona that a lot of highly successful women display.  Yes, I'm talking about Hillary Clinton, but I'm also speaking from my own experience at a high-powered boys' club law firm in Washington, D.C.  Many of the successful female attorneys I worked with directly or encountered as co-counsel (particularly those over 40) simply couldn't renounce femininity strongly enough; it seemed like they thought the only way to succeed and earn the respect of their male peers was to overcompensate and out-man the men.  Many of them made a point to use foul language at work, to behave stridently toward underlings, to take extremely aggressive stances on the legal issues in their cases, and even to dress mannishly.  Some were childless, but those who did have kids proved to have little ability or desire to find a work/home balance, and overwhelmingly chose absentee motherhood instead.  And the sad thing is, these choices didn't earn them one bit of respect, but rather made them disliked and unhappy.

I know that I owe a debt of gratitude to these women for being pioneers in male-dominated fields.  I can't imagine the crap they had to deal with to fight their way to the top, and I appreciate their efforts, because their successes will make it easier for me and other women to follow and succeed in turn.  On the other hand, I see in our modern society that girls are increasingly taught to replace equality with misandry, assertiveness with bitchiness, self-confidence with brashness, and aspiration with naked ambition.  Is it any wonder when their role-models are political bitch-queens and celebrity poptarts?

In my opinion, Sarah Palin comes off as a capable, confident woman, a no-nonsense mother of five who doesn't treat her gender as a handicap or a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Her neutral treatment is what allows her gender to be a non-issue, and I'd love to see her in the White House, so that at last, women can run as reformers, or conservatives, or beltway outsiders, and not as gender novelties.