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When Walter Mondale chose New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984, he set off the briefest of crazes. The sheer newness of the first female vice presidential candidate for a major party delighted the media and—initially—the public. She drew large crowds wherever she went; schoolgirls were brought along to witness her speeches. Her supporters chanted, "Run with a woman, win with a woman." Much of the media response was predictable—she was described as "feisty" and "pushy but not threatening," and was asked if she knew how to bake blueberry muffins. She was also questioned, in a debate with Vice President George H.W. Bush, about whether the "Soviets might be tempted to take advantage of you simply because you are a woman." When she stood before the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, anchor Tom Brokaw announced: "Geraldine Ferraro … The first woman to be nominated for vice president … Size 6!"
It was not, to say the least, an entirely successful campaign. Much of the coverage was dominated by Ferraro's refusal to disclose her husband's tax records. Ronald Reagan carried 49 out of 50 states, and 56 percent of women voted for him, up 10 percent from 1980. But what Ferraro was most surprised by, in focus groups convened after the election, was that stay-at-home mothers had been horrified by her candidacy, despite the fact that her three children were teenagers. "What we found was that some women felt intimidated," she says now. How would their husbands view them if they were just staying at home rather than shattering glass ceilings and conquering the world? "I thought, 'God almighty, how did that happen?' … They thought it would somehow hurt them. That if I could do all these things—be a supermom or whatever—how would it look for them, if 'all' they were doing was taking care of their children at home?" They wondered, she says, if it would jeopardize their marriages.
