For all the gains women have made in politics, the relationship between women politicians and the media remains as bumpy as a ride over the pothole-filled streets of Washington. In the nation's capital, a driver loses hubcaps; in politics, a woman loses credibility if she has the wrong hairdo. By now you'd think media stereotyping of political women in America might have ceased to be the springboard for fluff reporting and sitcom laughter. But as Maria Braden points out in her new book, stereotypes and trivialization are still hogging the highway. And it's no laughing matter.

"When the news media imply that women are anomalies in high public office, the public is likely to regard them as bench warmers rather than as an integral part of government. . . . More women than ever hold high-level government positions, yet they are still portrayed by the media as novelties," Braden writes.

In a book that alternates not always successfully between a chronology and an analysis, it is Braden's series of snapshots of political women in this century that give her work juice and life. She tells the stories and traces the histories of several dozen women who have made their marks on the political scene over many years: Jeanette Rankin, for example, the first woman elected to Congress; Claire Booth Luce and Helen Gahagan Douglas (dubbed the "glamour girls" of Congress in the 1940s); and the combative Dixy Lee Ray, who in 1976 at the age of sixty-three became governor of Washington. ("Just about everyone predicted the state was not ready for an unmarried woman who gave herself a chainsaw for Christmas," Newsweek reported at the time.) There's also good coverage of such contemporary groundbreakers as Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale's running mate on the 1984 Democratic presidential ticket, and New Jersey's Republican governor, Christine Todd Whitman. (Besieged by reporters repeatedly asking her how it feels to be a woman governor, an exasperated Whitman developed a stock answer: "I am a governor who happens to be a woman.")

Braden relies on news clips for much of her material. But her original interviews with such people as Ferraro and former Texas governor Ann Richards (who warns women in politics never to change their hairstyles if they don't want to risk being seen as indecisive and capricious) add freshness. Whatever the source, the women who've walked the walk describe best how quickly the media move to lock them into an image -- and their chronicles of how they've fought back show the perils they face. Dianne Feinstein (who was caught in newspaper photos trying not to cry during the 1983 effort to recall her as mayor of San Francisco) is quoted as saying: "Do not cry. Ever. If you've got to bite off your tongue or close your eyes so tight that nobody can see what's in them, do it. Because a man can cry and somehow it doesn't bother anybody. If a woman cries, it's an immediate, destructive thing that goes out and that everybody seems to remember."

Braden raises a number of issues: the skepticism among reporters over whether women politicians can make tough decisions, the uneasy relationship between women politicians and women reporters, and the consistency with which political women are penalized for their marital status. An example of this last point is the case of Mary Sue Terry, who was openly attacked for being single by Oliver North (who pointedly lauded her opponent, Republican George Allen, as a "family man") when she opposed Allen in the 1993 Virginia gubernatorial race. Then there is the cautionary tale of Ferraro, the first woman ever to be placed on a national presidential ticket. She was attacked for everything from her short-sleeved dresses on the campaign trail (her middle-aged upper arms wobbled when she waved) to the minute details of her parents' financial lives and her husband's alleged professional dealings with the Mafia. Nothing was ever proven. As one reporter who covered that brutal campaign, I am impressed that she survived.

Things are not all bad for women in politics, which Braden takes pains to point out. Television has vastly increased women's visibility; politicians like Governor Whitman and Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado built national reputations through exposure on the tube.

 Braden also points out that the media can hype progress while ignoring the larger picture. Consider, for example, the breathless media reports during 1992, the much-touted "Year of the Woman." Women were elected that year to the House in record numbers and the number of women in the Senate tripled. But when the 103rd Congress convened, women made up only 11 percent of the House and 7 percent of the Senate. Unfortunately, this was not nearly as colorful a story as the "Year of the Woman" and it was not reported with anything like the energy. "The political success of these women was news precisely because they were still so unusual," Braden states.

Disappointingly, many of the most provocative issues raised by Braden, who teaches journalism at the University of Kentucky, leave the reader thirsting for more analysis. For example, although she gives a detailed and forthright chronology of Elizabeth Holtzman's ferocious attack on Geraldine Ferraro during their battle for the Democratic nomination for a New York Senate seat in 1992, she does not delve deeply into why in this day and age the media still salivate when one feminist attacks another. ("A cat fight," crowed The Washington Times; a "feminist paradox," harrumphed The New York Times.) Braden rightly scorns reporters for their behavior, but summarizes thusly: "The answer is not for journalists to ask women to stay above the fray while the news media continue their no-holds-barred coverage. Journalists must become partners in media coverage that focuses on issues, that has humor, and that discerns differences between candidates based on more than gender and appearance."

All I can say to that is: good luck. Having been on both sides, I predict it will be a mighty cold day in hell before journalists become "partners in media coverage" with either each other or with women politicians. Braden would have drawn a little more blood if she had thrust deeper into examining the systemic problems of male-dominated journalism. It is indeed disheartening to see women running for high political office still denied gender-equal treatment by the media. Why isn't this changing faster? It is virtually impossible to think of a single political woman today who would be taken seriously as a candidate for the U.S. presidency -- and that's not because the talent and ambition aren't out there.

Another point that deserves more examination is the frequently conflicted relationships between women journalists and women politicians. Women in politics continue to wish for a (perhaps sublimated) natural bond here, but they shouldn't count on it. No one knows this better than our non-elected, very political First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose nastiest surprise in her uneasy dance with the media has been the ferocity of women reporters, who she originally expected would give her a break or two once in a while. Forget sisterhood -- they've been unrelentingly tough. "There's just something about her that pisses people off," author Sally Quinn told The New Yorker. Part of Hillary's problems come from the bubbling pot of local Washington gossip, which has its own whoppingly trivial nature. (Rumor has it that Quinn felt insulted by the Clintons' lack of attention to her when they came to town. Less trivial was her concern that a friend who labored with Hillary on her book, It Takes a Village, never got credit for her work.)

Strong women are automatic targets in our culture. But should women be doing the shooting? Are women journalists who pillory Hillary doing it to show they're as tough as men? Or are they actually striking a blow (albeit painful) for the kind of gender equality women in politics say they want?

And should women reporters take the lead in changing female stereotypes? Yes, and they do. I recall the great satisfaction I felt as a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times when, along with a couple of other women working city-side at the time, we sent petitions through the newsroom demanding the end of bathing-beauty photos on the front page. We succeeded by shaming our male colleagues into signing (and by having an editor willing to be enlightened), which was big stuff at the time. But it's not that simple now. The pressures on women political reporters to prove themselves as tough as men are particularly severe. "Toughness and gutsiness are rewarded in journalism with promotions and choice assignments, and peers tend to razz a reporter who writes a story perceived as fluff," Braden notes. This is all too true. And it feeds into the "herd" coverage that good reporters say they deplore. So who dares to break ranks? Not a woman wary of being co-opted by her sympathies, that's for sure.

Not all of the problems raised in this book can be laid at the door of the media, obviously, which raises the old question: to what extent do journalists reflect the prevailing culture and to what extent do they form it? It's a question that keeps circling around without resolution. Journalists who still claim they don't "make" news ignore their own power, but they are also caught up in the stereotypes and prejudices of their era. What is not true is that they are helpless to change them.

Underneath much of the prejudice against women is the larger, also troubling problem of media hostility toward all politicians. We've all heard it; the good people don't want to go into politics these days because they'll have their lives ripped apart by the media. It's increasingly hard to see why anyone, man or woman, would want to run for high public office. But as I ran through the stories of the many fine women profiled in this book I felt a sense of pride in what they have accomplished. Perhaps the sheer number of them will make further inroads into the media's habit of treating them as phenomena or novelties. Can this country accept the idea of women as powerful people? I'd like to think so. But critical to that is an understanding that women are as different from each other as men, and deserve to be evaluated on the basis of what they are trying to do in politics -- not on whether a tear smears their mascara or how low or high they wear their skirts.

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