This year, 64 years after American women won the right to vote, New York's venerable Ninth Congressional District may finally produce the first US woman vice-president.
Veteran political pollsters agree that the "impossible dream" of the early US suffragettes is a strong possibility in 1984 when the voting power of women could be the deciding factor in a close race for the presidency.
Mr George Gallup conducted a nationwide poll late last year which revealed that a surprisingly high proportion of US voters would be more likely to vote Democratic if a woman was on the ticket. Later David Garth, a respected political consultant, concluded from his own polling that a Democrat would have to take the west to win the election. One way the west could be won was with a woman on the ticket, the polling results showed.
The mere suggestion that this could happen has already had a dramatic political impact. President Reagan, alarmed by the growing "gender gap" among voters, recently interrupted a busy speaking schedule to make a last-minute appearance at a political fundraiser to celebrate the birthday of suffragette Susan B. Anthony.
Mr Reagan made a strong pitch on behalf of Republicans, saying it was quite likely they would put a woman on the ticket in 1988 even though he planned to stay the course with Vice-President Bush in 1984.
Democrats have been even more direct in their appeal to women who will comprise for the first time 50 per cent of the delegates at their party's presidential nominating convention in July.
Mr Walter Mondale, a former vice-president, leads a list of seven presidential candidates who have said they would consider a woman as a running mate. The Rev Jesse Jackson has said unequivocally he would choose a woman to run beside him.
The issue of a woman national candidate is raised often in the increasingly florid rhetoric of the Democratic primaries. It is fanned and kept alive by a US media ever hungry for a new angle on an old political story. Inevitably, it leads to list-making.
"Will this Queen's housewife be the next US vice-president?" read the bold front-page headline in a New York newspaper.
It was a whimsical reference to Mrs Geraldine Ferraro, a three-term US congresswoman who has emerged as the front-runner in a field of seven top Democratic women mentioned for the second spot on the Party's ticket, just a "heart-beat away from the presidency" as Americans are wont to say.
Others frequently mentioned are Mayor Diane Feinstein of San Francisco, Governor Martha Lane Collins of Kentucky, Representative Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Representative Patricia Schroder of Colorado, Representative Lindy Boggs of Louisiana, and Lt-Governor Martha Griffiths of Michigan.
Each one, however, is burdened by significant political liabilities. Both Mikulski and Schroder are thought to be too closely identified with feminist issues; Mrs Boggs is not pro-choice on the issue of abortion; Diane Feinstein is Jewish and has championed homosexual rights and other liberal causes in San Francisco; Governor Collins has been in office less than a year; and Lt-Governor Griffiths, at age 71 is considered too old.
Of them all, only Mrs Ferraro is considered likely to appeal to a cross-section of voters, particularly women voters who could outnumber men by a wide margin at the polls. By November, there will be an estimated eight million more women than men among the electorate.
At 48, this fine-boned woman from Queens is the only woman in congress who has penetrated the closely-guarded male power structure of the US House of Representatives.
She has succeeded by observing certain golden rules: paying dues by shouldering some of the Party's less desirable jobs, keeping her mouth shut publicly, learning to dispense favours effectively, and finally, attracting the notice and support of the party leadership.
Mrs Ferraro, who favours traditional black dresses and a double strand of false pearls, eventually reaped the rewards. She ran for and won the position of secretary of the Democratic caucus, a largely ceremonial post that led to an influential position as a member of the party policy and steering committee. Next came an important assignment on the house budget committee and this year, one of the Party's key jobs as chairman of the platform committee for the 1984 Democratic convention.
It is more than a little significant that she has achieved all this with the strong backing of Mr Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, the powerful Speaker of the House.
"Tip is a person I confide in a lot. The men in my district are just like him", said Mrs Ferraro. She referred to the conservative, largely blue-collar district of one-family and two-family houses popularized as "Archie Bunker country" in the TV series, All in the Family.
It is also Geraldine Ferraro country, an area of ethnic neighbourhoods and strong prejudices similar to the Boston Irish political environment which spawned "Tip" O'Neill.
Mrs Ferraro is much more liberal than her district but the majority of voters in New York's Ninth love her none the less because she is one of them. A devout Roman Catholic of Italian descent, she worked her way through college and law school with the help of her widowed mother who went back to work in New York's garment district as a crochet beader when her husband died suddenly at 46.
Despite her feminist views, Mrs Ferraro was re-elected with 58 per cent of the vote in the same year her district supported President Reagan with 57 per cent of the vote.
"Gerri has made her commitment to work inside the system and that makes her one of those unusual women who is one of the guys. She's very attractive, very feminine and very tough," said Mr Barney Frank, a house colleague and fellow Democrat from Massachusetts.
Even so, Mrs Ferraro once silenced the normally buzzing floor of the House with an impassioned recital for a pro-choice amendment on abortion which she admits, as a Catholic, has been the toughest issue for her.
"I ask you to be personal about this vote. I ask you if your wife or daughter were raped and became pregnant would you not give her the right to make her own decision," she asked the overwhelmingly male house which supported her position.
Her skill at walking a political tightrope led party leaders to annoint her as the perfect running mate for the Democratic front-runner Walter Mondale, if a woman is indeed selected. Furthermore, in the polyglot world of American politics, she represents the right mix. "Gerri is north-east corridor to his mid-West, Italian to his Anglo, Catholic to his Protestant," said a party veteran.
In short, she represents the ethnic, upwardly mobile middle-class voters who have been crossing over to the Republican side in recent years.
