I watched Rudy Guiliani charm the audience during a recent Republican debate when he was asked to name the biggest mistake he’d ever made. He chuckled and answered that he’d made so many mistakes he couldn’t recount them all in the time allotted. Laughs and backslapping all around. I’m glad he was forthright instead of doing a manufactured mea culpa, but maybe one of those mistakes people were laughing about was his carrying on an extramarital affair for a year while he was living with his wife and children. Now that he’s married his lover, it seems that it was just a case of love conquering all. I don’t necessarily vote for a leader based on his marital track record, but I can’t help thinking that if it had been Hillary Clinton who had been married three times, carried on a secret affair for a year while she was living with her husband and had strained relations with her child, she would be getting raked over the coals right and left by both the right and left. Randy Rudy is just, you know, being a guy, while Hillary gets criticized for staying in her one and only marriage! In fact, Hillary can expect to get criticism for just about everything: her hair, her weight, showing too much cleavage, dressing like a frump, being too strong, not being strong enough to be Commander-in-Chief, and being an all-around power-hungry monster (as if the guys are all running for purely altruistic reasons). I know I shouldn’t be surprised because it’s hard out there for any strong woman who expects to be taken seriously. Consider a recent study cited in The Washington Post, showing that men were less willing to work with women who negotiated for higher pay and, in fact, viewed women who asked for more money as “less nice.” Of course, they didn’t apply the same standard to other men. So guess what? Four times as many men as women in the study asked for a higher starting salary than they were offered. And no, it’s not that hackneyed excuse that women lack the self-esteem or self-confidence to ask for more, the researchers found. It’s that women know very well that they will be penalized socially for speaking up for themselves. Consequently, many of us hang back, shut up and stay poorer than our male counterparts, but every time you ask for what you deserve in a job or stand up to the brutal grilling of a political campaign or walk out on an abusive marriage, you’re making it a better world for goddesses in training.