Politics is rough and tumble everywhere, and many women recoil from that negative aspect of it - the nastiness, the charges and counter-charges.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.
You can hardly judge women's effect on politics merely from the action of individual women officeholders.
It is very creditable when a woman gets into politics. She does this at the expense of responsibilities toward her home and family and should be lauded for this.
Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not.
Every congresswoman surely endures the same strains that drive some of her male colleagues to have affairs: lots of travel, families far away, heady work that makes a domestic routine seem distant and boring. But the stakes are much higher for women, because they are still judged by a different standard.
I think sometimes women are not driven by the same, albeit, testosterone power thing that pushes men to get into politics.
I have spent my whole life trying to prove that women can get into politics. I'd now say to them, 'For God's sake don't do it - you'll get slaughtered.'
I don't have a steady relationship. That's something that women in politics deal with. For some reason, men in politics seem to have a larger charisma, and women drop around their feet. I haven't noticed that so much for me.
Politics is a potent way to empower women.
Women are tough campaigners. They certainly know how to withstand attacks. And I think we make a mistake if we say, as some do, that women should play by different rules, or that they are somehow especially vulnerable to the rules of politics. I don't think that's true.