In“dependence” for All From before 1920 when women gained the right to vote, they have been laying groundwork to establish their independence from their male counterparts and a place in the political world. They have faced slurs, abuse, and ostracism in the efforts to create equality of status and opportunity in the previously exclusive and still male-dominated world of politics. Amendments, campaigns, victories and defeats later, women face the possibility of a female candidate for presidency. It would seem that they are finally getting what they have been fighting or all along, but have they really? Female politicians evoke ideas of strong women in business suits making policies and shaking hands of foreign and local powers, maybe even kissing a few babies. They would be confident and decisive, qualified and capable. But that ideal doesn’t stop at the office; women of politics would have a home life beyond their jobs, complete with the American Dream of a perhaps not the picket fence, but a husband and two or three children. Politicians stand as representations of the people and what sort of lifestyle the people think is acceptable. While men can be seen as powerful and independent and technically women can too, the “fairer sex” isn’t truly seen as complete without a male counterpart at their side. In A Woman’s Edge, Molly Ball talks about how females are not disadvantaged, how they are just as desirable if not more so than male candidates and how the only barriers they face are the ones they imagine for themselves. While making very strong points about the capabilities and advantages of female candidates, her examples of strong, successful women actually gives basis to another argument by Crystal Wright in Hilary Clinton, Huma Abedin and the Politics of Marriage, that women are only acceptable if they have men in their lives. Ball talks about the successes of female politicians, all of who have something in common other than