No Skirting the Issue: Politics Now Women's Game

This election is all about women—and Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton can't take all the credit, Sarah Hughes writes in the Independent. The candidates are the most visible, but female commentators, comedians, and protesters have set the tone and are asking the difficult questions. "The good ol' boys are still there, hollering," says Hughes, but it’s the likes of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow leading the pack.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has taken a backseat to sidekick Samantha Bee, whose best moments are equaled only by Tina Fey's Saturday Night Live turn. "Until this election, the tendency among poll-watchers has been to lump all women together into one homogenous mass," explains Hughes. This is the first in which women "have been allowed to be heard, to be seen as a power in their own right." (More women stories.)