Two months after Sarah Palin joined the GOP ticket, and four months after Hillary Clinton ended her quest for the presidency, 2008 is turning out to be a transformative year for women in politics, according to some women leaders across the political spectrum.

As election day nears, it's clear that gender was not a disqualifying factor for either Clinton or Palin. Voters who turned against them did so for other reasons, just as they do with male candidates.

Palin's candidacy has sent a jolt through some traditional liberal women's organizations. The mother of five and former beauty queen is the antithesis of the bra-burning militant libbers of the '60s, and she is adamantly anti-abortion. Yet Palin calls herself a feminist and has been hailed as a power woman by thousands of supportive women who wave their lipstick tubes at her rallies.

"She is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America," John McCain declared last weekend.

While liberal groups have strong ideological differences with Palin, some rallied to her defense when she was accused of neglecting her family for the campaign. "Would they be asking whether a man with five children should be running for high office?" wrote Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, in an online column. "... I feel for Palin, and for all women struggling to be taken seriously in a man's realm."

Although she finds the Alaska governor's views on issues critical to some women "a disappointment," Gandy said in an interview that she believes it's important for her own teenage daughters "to see women competing at the highest levels of American politics."

All in all, when the votes are cast and the country moves on, the women's movement will have lots of reasons to feel good about the 2008 election year. "I never thought I'd see another woman on a national ticket in this cycle after Hillary lost," said Geraldine Ferraro, who 24 years ago was the first woman to run on a major party's national ticket. "But it's like a ripple effect. Hillary's candidacy, my candidacy — they have a ripple effect far beyond the immediate results."

The unexpected recognition of a conservative as a role model for women has some traditional feminists reconsidering the movement's mission. "It's going to take us a while to find our bearings," said Sarah Stoesz, who runs the Planned Parenthood office that oversees Minnesota and the Dakotas. "As feminists, we've always thought that a core aspect of women's equality is about being in control of our reproductive lives. But Sarah Palin is throwing the calculus out the window and demonstrating a view that some people would call feminism: I can be governor, I can have five children, I can shoot and field-dress a moose, and I don't need access to abortion.

"There's a big debate inside the leadership of the women's movement about how much abortion should be a key political issue."

Even if Palin's star fades, her impact on the image of women might be more lasting. April Ponnuru, 30, said that though she wishes Palin had more policy experience, "at the end of the day, she is a conservative woman who has strong convictions on life and other conservative issues — and she made it."

"There are really a lot of us out there," said Ponnuru, the executive director of the National Review Institute and the mother of a 3-year-old. "We are vastly underrepresented in politics, and she's the first truly national politician to make a strong statement about being a pro-life woman — and that's very appealing."

Conservative activist and lawyer Cleta Mitchell started her career as a liberal women's rights politician in Oklahoma, fighting for Equal Rights Amendment passage in the '70s. "We never said equal rights was just for some of you girls, depending on your political philosophy — that was never part of the deal," Mitchell said. "It was about having options and choices."

The backlash over Palin's $150,000 designer shopping spree suggests there are limits to what the public finds acceptable choices by a candidate for political office, but they are less restrictive than they used to be.

"Back in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro could not have dressed like Sarah Palin and been on the ticket with Walter Mondale," said Michelle Bernard, president of the conservative Independent Women's Forum. "She (Palin) is feminine and she is fashionable, and that is OK now."

Bernard speculated that both sides of the ideological spectrum might find common ground: "Is there a big enough tent — can we all find the common ground in the push for women's rights regardless of women's position on abortion?"

By calling herself a feminist — once considered a dirty word by the religious right — Palin is challenging feminism as no longer synonymous with liberalism.

"It's just nonsense to say you can't be a feminist and be against abortion," says former Clinton fundraiser Lynn Forester de Rothschild, an abortion-rights supporter who now backs McCain. "... Sarah Palin "rocks all the stereotypes of feminism and can only enhance progress for women."