Why can't a woman . . .

As more and more strong women rise to the top of the political world, CAMILLE PAGLIA ponders the paradigms of power and gender

Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading in all national polls in the United States as the first woman candidate with a real chance to be nominated for president by a major party. There have been many women mayors, governors and senators, and even an unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, but American women's exercise of political power is still a work in progress.

Other nations, in contrast, have had women leaders since the 1960s -- from Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir to Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto. Examples since the early 1990s include Mary Robinson (Ireland), Kim Campbell (Canada), Angela Merkel (Germany), Michelle Bachelet (Chile) and Tarja Halonen (Finland).

LINK: Globe and Mail