When I joined Bill Clinton's start-up presidential campaign in 1991, I was confident that women would play an ever more important role, but I never gave a minute's thought to what would happen if we won. When we did - and I became the first woman to serve as White House press secretary - it changed my life. But it didn't change the world.

That's not to say that women's priorities are better than men's. Rather, when women are empowered, when they can speak from the experience of their own lives, they often address different, previously neglected issues. And families and whole communities benefit.

In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton's campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn't buy his alleged concern for the middle class.

I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad - experience, how people look, what they bring to the job. But there's no question women are paid less. Women don't ask.

Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me - just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity.

Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm; he's cool; he's self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.

On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president.