Geraldine Ferraro autographed cover of MS. Magazine

“Will a Woman Make the Difference?”
Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman vice presidential candidate of a major U.S. party, graces the Ms. cover.

 In 1984, national politics was, even more, an old boys’ club than it is today;
 just 24 of the 535 voting members of Congress and no governors were women.

By those standards, the notion of a female vice president was audacious. “There’s no way,” Ferraro herself had said, with typical candor, at a closed meeting at the National Women’s Caucus three months earlier, “any presidential candidate is going to choose a woman as a running mate unless he’s 15 points behind in the polls.”

That’s almost exactly what happened. In the Democratic attempt to unseat President Ronald Reagan, former Vice President Walter Mondale, lagging by some 12 to 19 points, selected Ferraro as his running mate. The election ended poorly for the Democrats: Reagan and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, won in a rout, with all but one state voting for the incumbents.

Ferraro’s candidacy, however, showed the public that a woman could campaign stride-for-stride for national office.

It would not be until 24 years later, when Senator John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, that another woman would appear on a major party’s ticket.

And now, 12 years after Palin, former Vice President Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate will make the California senator the second Democratic woman to become a vice presidential nominee.

Looking back at Ferraro’s candidacy puts in harsh relief the strides women in politics have made as well as the gendered relics that remain part of the political conversation today.