Now add being a female candidate to the task. A 1997 survey showed that 76% of Americans are ready to vote for a woman president. But the women who have entered the upper echelons of American politics are still few and far between.

Would she? Could she?

Only nine of 100 senators are women. Only three of 50 state governors are women. There has never been a female president or vice president.

So does Elizabeth Dole, who hinted at presidential ambitions this week, have a chance? What would it take to put a woman in the White House?

Confused? So are the Americans

While men are judged on past performance, women must also appeal as women and to women. And there is no sure-fire way to do that.

There are men who like female candidates to still seem "womanly". There are men who believe if a woman is in political office, she should be tough as nails. There are conservative women that want female candidates to push for "family values"- traditional family roles and better health and education. There are liberal women who want to push "women's agendas" including the controversial right to an abortion.

To make matters worse, in 1994 (two years after The Year of the Woman) the General Social Survey showed 20% of Americans still believed men were better suited "emotionally" to politics than most women.

The Hillary factor

Nevertheless, women who study women in politics say gender is not an automatic barrier to getting a female in the White House.

Hillary: Wronged again

Women, they say, are making steady strides into national politics. There are currently 56 female members of the House of Representatives, up from 16 in 1978.

Debbie Walsh, the associate director of Rutgers University's Centre for the American Woman and Politics, says many people confuse the issue with the public's response to Hillary Clinton.

When, as First Lady, Hillary Clinton stepped into the political arena to take on America's health care system, her poll ratings nose-dived. "But she's not elected," the public cried. "She's his wife, not the vice president."

Later, when she played the supportive wife and "stood by her man" in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, her ratings soared.

The problem was: "Hillary Clinton tried to transform the role of First Lady. Until now, every First Lady's career (with the possible exception of Eleanor Roosevelt) has been to be the supportive spouse of her political man," Ms Walsh said.

"People are resistant to change. Had Bob Dole won, Elizabeth Dole would have faced some of that too."

"That's what they want from a spouse. Women that we've elected in Congress are not shy types. They are strong and forceful with a policy agenda. They work hard to get things accomplished," she said.

Money makes the vote come around

Barbara Burrell, a University of Wisconsin political researcher says the answer is money.

Until 1988, female congressional candidates raised only about three-fourths of what men did. Since then non-profit organisations have helped women candidates raise on average the same as or more than their male counterparts.

So will the new millennium be a watershed in American politics? If Elizabeth Dole decides to run, does she have a fighting chance?

Ms Walsh says she is probably in a better position than any female Democrat.

"It took Richard Nixon to go to China," she says, making a parallel with the former Republican president's crossing-of-the-Rubicon visit to a Communist state. While a Republican woman could side with the party's hard-line, a Democrat nominee would risk being pigeon-holed as too liberal; too soft.

Perhaps the best answer lies with the punters.

"I don't think many decent people will say that it is not time for the United States to have a female president," American Thomas Threlkeld told BBC News Online.