The Hill News

NOTE: The following first appeared in The Guardian on Jan. 4, 2012. â€" Ed.

A woman has to be twice as good as a man, to go half as far.
â€" Fannie Hurst, American writer, 1889-1968

Still true, though less so today than just a mere decade or two ago. That said, a woman launching a serious bid for the US presidency is still a rarity. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann proved both sides of that double-edge gender sword in her bid for the Republican presidential nomination â€" a bid she has now ended.

Like former Republican vice-presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former First Lady, US Senator and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann was both helped and hindered by her gender at various points along the campaign trail. I suppose this is an improvement over the days when a woman attempting to make s! erious inroads in any field dominated by men, including national politics, was only hurt by her gender. Being a woman seemed more an affliction than merely a trait shared by slightly more than 50 percent of the population.

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