Women find fault with Hillary

Hillary Clinton: Few female fans

By Jane Hughes in New York

New York ought to be just the kind of place to welcome Hillary Clinton with open arms.

No matter what she does, she's wrong. If she wears coke-bottle glasses, she's ugly. If she uses her maiden name, it's a slur against Bill Clinton... She can't do right.

Erica Jong, Feminist writer

This is, after all, the city where powerful, ambitious, tough, intelligent, and liberal women were virtually invented, so a woman with all those characteristics and a dash of celebrity would seem the dream candidate.

Yet many women regard the First Lady as more like a nightmare.

Image problem

At the polling organisation Blumb and Weprin, Julie Weprin has seen female voters turning away from the First Lady in their droves.

"Apparently she makes them uncomfortable, and it's not clear why," she says.

Mrs Clinton has alienated some career mothers

"You'd expect these women to admire someone as ambitious and powerful as she is, and the response has been the opposite"

She may not know why, but the pushchair-wielding women bounding their way around Central Park, participating in the latest mother-and-baby exercise craze, have a fairly good idea.

These are career mothers who loathe much of what the First Lady represents.

"She's part of a generation of women who were so determined to prove what women could do, they let go of other things, like being a mother," says Laura Koch.

Mrs Clinton needs more female support to pull ahead

"Sometimes she feels alien to me."

"She's got to where she is by being like a man," adds Eileen Kinny.

"She needs to be more like a woman. She's too pushy."

Those kind of sentiments have feminists tearing out their hair.

Judged harshly

Erica Jong, a feminist writer, says women judge someone like Hillary Clinton more harshly than they would a male counterpart.

"No matter what she does, she's wrong," she says.

"If she wears coke-bottle glasses, she's ugly."

"If she uses her maiden name, it's a slur against Bill Clinton."

"If she uses her married name, she's hiding something."

"She can't do right."

Roiphe: Hillary lacks vulnerability

On top of that, women appear to expect Hillary Clinton to succeed without surrendering any of her vulnerability.

Again and again, she is criticised for not showing her feelings when her marriage was going through crisis during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Katie Roiphe, another feminist writer, believes she has lost massive support by refusing to let love stand in the way of her goals.

"She embodies a feminist ideal of this tough, steely, powerful women," she says.

"And yet secretly, we don't really like that kind of ideal," she says.

"If she were a little vulnerable, or at least could pretend to be, she'd be a lot more effective as a politician."

The Lazio advantage

Hillary Clinton's opponent, Rick Lazio, is ideally positioned to take advantage of her so-called women problem.

Republican candidate Rick Lazio: Family man with female appeal

He is a family man, with a winning smile, and moderate politics - a winning combination.

He is hitting the First Lady where it hurts, by running television advertisements echoing the sentiments of many female voters by declaring: "Hillary Clinton, you just can't trust her."

He and Hillary Clinton are neck and neck in the polls.

If she is to pull ahead, she needs to start winning more female support.

She now only has two months left in which to do that.