When Madeleine Albright was US ambassador to the United Nations in the early '90s, the mostly male press corps called her Madeleine Half-Bright behind her back.

"She doesn't have the intellect to handle the nitty-gritty of foreign affairs," one reporter sniped. "Women are just too emotional to do the job."

When Bill Clinton appointed Dr Albright the first US female secretary of state in 1997, the same critic dismissed the appointment as left-wing political correctness.

At least the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger tried to be polite. "Welcome to the fraternity," he said to her. "Henry, I hate to tell you, but it's not a fraternity any more," she shot back.

And yet, as Dr Albright, 66, writes in her autobiography, Madame Secretary, published this week in the US and next month in Australia, despite the daily grind of high-level meetings with kings and presidents, overseeing treaties, no matter how much she operated like a man in a man's world, she could not separate her gender from the job.

During her tenure she was infuriated by men who underestimated and belittled her just because she was a woman. Interestingly, she writes, the problem was worse at home.

Dr Albright was proud to be a role model for women, and there is little question that without her, the US public would hardly be so accepting of Condoleezza Rice. But for all her success, the most telling moment in Dr Albright's book is her questioning of whether a married woman with full domestic responsibilities could ever be the player she was on the world stage.

"When I became secretary of state, I realised . . . I would never have climbed that high had I still been married. Yet I am deeply saddened to have been divorced. I know that, at the time, I would have given up any thought of a career if it would have made Joe [who left her for another woman] change his mind."

Originally a Czech refugee - her grandparents were Jews who died in the Holocaust - she lived briefly in London before settling in America, where she met and married Joseph Albright, a journalist. She writes of feeling like Cinderella when her ambition to be married was realised. In quick succession, she had three children: premature twins, Alice and Anne, a daughter who died at birth, and then Katherine.

As her girls grew up, Dr Albright earned a doctorate in law and public policy, raised money for Democratic candidates, taught international relations, and eventually began working in the Carter administration for her old professor, the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Then her husband told her he had a younger lover, and was so torn apart by the situation that he called every day to complain that he could not choose between Madeleine and the other woman. He then announced that his final decision would be determined by whether or not he won the Pulitzer Prize.

"If he got the Pulitzer, he would stay with me. If not, he would leave and we would get a divorce." He lost the prize and with it, dissolved the marriage.

And Dr Albright was set to conquer the world stage.

The Guardian; The Telegraph, London

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Source: "The Sydney Morning Herald".