Ferraro knows this all too well. For men, there's a presumption of competence. For women, there's the burden of proof. That gets exacerbated at the national level. During her 1984 vice presidential bid, for instance, she was constantly peppered with questions not only about her toughness, but also about her lack of foreign policy experience.
Nobody raises that with the guys.
I had to prove that physically I could. Even women like Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state in the United States, who has done much to dispell stereotypes about women's toughness and foreign policy acumen, gets singled out because of her gender. She was in the Middle East and one newspaper suggested that her female presence' made it easier for the negotiations to go smoothly. It is the media, say many, that play a critical role in perpetuating the myths about women in power, or women trying to move into traditionally male power circles. Ferraro's treatment during her 1984 bid is often cited as a prime example.