For better or for worse, John McCain's gutsy selection for his running mate of Sarah Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, signals a new era for women in America and perhaps the world.

Being a powerful woman poses special difficulties: Americans may pretend to enjoy (or aspire to) racial blindness, but not gender blindness. Women leaders must forge personal strategies for combining "feminine" with "powerful" even while living in a society like ours that pays lip service to the idea that gender doesn't matter anymore.

Hillary forged a way for a woman to appear tough and powerful enough to be president without altogether losing her female "brand."

But Gov. Sarah Palin is something completely new. She is still young, still beautiful, still in the middle of all the messy complications that the sexual role of being a woman brings -- a Down syndrome baby, a teenage daughter's pregnancy. The downsides are obvious; the potential for delegitmating Sarah Palin's candidacy remains intense.

But the potential upside for American women who are tired of pretending to be men, while remaining anxious to contribute all we can, is also intense.

What we need here is a new sexual archetype for female achievement. And I think in Gov. Palin, we have an extraordinary one: pioneer woman.