Simon MacDonald

And it is fantastic to see how Hilary develops and what she's able to achieve on her own, although there is some personal price that she pays for that.

A huge personal price.

And that's traditionally been the way she's looking, obviously, at the role, the whole issue of gender and politics and how difficult it is for a woman to be successful in politics full stop and makes us all think, I think, about how much more difficult it would be if you had a partner and a family.

So Hilary, the Hilary Rodman of this book,

just has her career and she's able to focus on it 100%, but she finds areas of her personal life missing.

We saw what the real Hillary did when she did have the husband and she did have the daughter and she tried to, as she was younger, to combine the career with the

having the child and having the family, and it was all a lot more difficult.

So it's always been a conundrum.

It was more a conundrum when she was doing it many years ago.

Hopefully it's less of a conundrum and it's less complex now, unless you want to be a politician, in which case it's very difficult for women, full stop.

One thing that she makes very clear which I certainly remember very well is this whole concept of Hilary being unlikable that's something that's used against her time and time again and I don't think that's

particular to the American context.

I think it's the same in Australia.

We saw what happened with Julia Gillard.

Women are held to a very different standard.

Women candidates for political office and women leaders are held to a different standard.

I remember reading a great article by Maureen Dowd when Hillary was running saying, why are we even asking if she's likeable?

This is not an election for class captain.

We're looking for a president here.

And Sittenfeld really nails that in this book, the whole concept that Hillary has to go above and beyond what a man has to show.