When it comes to making political decisions, American women are still in thrall to the “hubby knows best” mentality. At least that’s what Washington Post columnist Linda Hirshman contends.

Hirshman, the feminist agente provocateuse who wrote Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, doesn’t blame the sisterhood for being oblivious to civic concerns. The problem, she says, is that most American women aren’t politically engaged to the same degree that men are. Instead, they tend to rely on second-hand information from their spouses to help them make election day decisions.

So if you’re hoping (or fearing) that the so-called “gender vote” will carry Hillary Clinton across the threshold of the Oval Office, don’t hold your breath.

Hirshman bases her cynicism on an admittedly tiny sample of educated suburban women from Washington, D.C. But history seems to back up her conclusions. Although American women have had the vote since 1920, they’ve never yet voted as a power-shifting bloc. Why should we expect them suddenly to start doing so?

Why, indeed? America is still far from ready for the idea of woman as president and commander-in-chief. Americans may like to think they invented feminism (along with everything else), but the country’s overall attitude toward women’s rights loiters several decades behind the rest of the developed world. Unless there’s a radical social upheaval in the offing, then, Clinton is destined to end up a political bridesmaid, never a bride.

From this side of the border, it seems that the United States is a lousy place to be if you’re a woman. There’s no federally legislated parental leave. The social safety net for single moms, always the poorest of the poor, is flimsy. Minimum wage jobs, where many women find themselves trapped, provide pitiful compensation. And most significantly, there’s no Equal Rights Amendment to give women the kind of constitutional protection that Section 28 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides.

I’m not suggesting that Canadians have much to be smug about. Canadian women earned the right to vote a mere two years ahead of their American counterparts, in 1918. It’s embarrassing to think that women weren’t even legal “persons” in the lordly Dominion of Canada until 1929, just a few generations ago.

Today, the conventional wisdom that the average female worker makes three-quarters of what a male worker does is actually shamefully optimistic. (The most recent statistics put the figure at 71 per cent.) Despite the general furor over public health care, women’s health remains so low on the agenda of provincial governments that midwifery is currently regulated in only seven provinces. And more than half a million women suffer domestic violence each year.

All things considered, though, I’d rather be female on this side of the 49th parallel. If you listen to the religious right, as many as half of Americans believe that the biblical account of creation should be taken literally. That means they dismiss not just Darwinian theory, but also rational theories of gender equality.

Influential groups, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family, work hard to prevent women’s rights from being taught in churches, in schools and in the mainstream media. Given the strength of American fundamentalism, it’s not surprising that women’s rights in the United States have been so slow to evolve.

Both American and Canadian suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote campaigned on the platform that a female electorate would change the world for the better. Give women the ballot, they argued, and they would reverse the social downslide of modern society. They’d bring about a kinder, gentler world — one where violence and viciousness of various kinds would soon be extinguished. A world ruled partly by petticoats would be a world without alcoholism, slums, battered women or war.

Today, those who believe hopefully in the power of the gender vote claim that politically activated women could also bring about a world without wage disparity, sexual harassment, environmental abuse or biased medical research.

Well, so far, so little progress. History offers a pretty weak basis for any faith in the ability of American women voters to throw enough collective weight onto the social pendulum to force a radical change in its direction.

I’m not sure Hillary Clinton is the best woman to serve the U.S. as president — and Iâe(TM)m certain that Condoleezza Rice isn’t — but wouldn’t it be interesting to see what a woman would do with the White House? (And I’m not talking about her taste in interior decorating.) In a country that still uses the sexist term “lady” to refer to the presidential consort, however, citizens will likely have to wait a long time yet to have their curiousity satisfied.