Boston ? There was a time when women used to talk about looking for “skirts” among the “suits” at a Senate hearing or in a governor’s office. So what do you say about a year when the fashion statement of the typical female candidate was a pants suit?

That 2002 was when women finally ran “just like men”? That campaigns have become gender-neutral or neutralized? That this is the era of post-gender politics? In one decade, we’ve gone through the Year of the Woman, the Year of the Angry White Man and the Year of the Soccer Mom. Some hopeful folks wanted to label 2002 the Year of the Woman Governor.

Ten women ran for state CEO jobs in nine states from Hawaii to Massachusetts. They weren’t “moms in tennis shoes” but women who had trudged up the pipeline. It was their turn.

Well, we did break the record. Instead of five women governors, we’ll have :quot; ta da! :quot; six. In Congress, we will have exactly the same number of women in the House :quot; 59 :quot; and in the Senate :quot; 13 :quot; as before. It’s hard to celebrate when the glass ceiling is barely above your eyebrows.

The year of what? In 2002, there isn’t A Woman’s Story to stretch across the political map. But there are a lot of women’s stories, including some cautionary tales.

In Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s disappointing run for governor is a reminder that a woman is no longer seen as an agent of change. Townsend, “the un-charismatic Kennedy” faced a genial opponent who took on the aura of the outsider. After eight years as lieutenant to an unpopular governor, Townsend was tagged as the establishment.

This tack was also taken against Shannon O’Brien in Massachusetts and Fran Ulmer in Alaska. When women are pegged as the insiders in states that have never elected a woman governor, where are we?

In a double bind?

Kathleen Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania says, “We always told women they didn’t have enough experience. Now that women have gained experience, we’re saying you’ve lost your outsider status and integrity.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Jean Carnahan was criticized in her losing Missouri race for being inexperienced. That was despite two years in the U.S. Senate and a lifetime as a political partner.

Another double bind? In Massachusetts, Shannon O’Brien was not only pegged as a member of the old boys network but coached into a bite-your-ankles aggressiveness in the last debate. Mitt Romney called her behavior “unbecoming,” a code word if there ever was one. But guess what? A lot of voters did find it unbecoming.

And if you need a third double bind, it’s apparently easier now to run negative ads against a woman candidate. She ought to be “tough enough” to take it. But it’s still dicey for a woman to go negative.

Jeanne Shaheen ran a tough race against the Republican tide in the New Hampshire Senate campaign. But the battle of negative ads didn’t help. If you don’t answer ads, you’re a wimp. If you do, well … even women voters get queasy. As pollster Celinda Lake says, “It’s still hard to think that a woman is both tough enough to do the job and shares their values.”

Exit polls were few and far between this year, but on the gender gap front it appeared that men leaned much more strongly Republican than women did Democratic. In the last few weeks, Lake adds, older women seemed to drift away from women candidates. “We thought this was a historical problem that would get better with time.” But now the women in the first wave of the women’s movement are those older women and, she worries, it isn’t getting better.

In the land of the double binds, women candidates proved they could be equally bland and equally nasty. But some were equally charismatic.

The new governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, comes to the national stage with both experience and stardust. Some of the women’s advocates are already lamenting that Granholm’s Canadian birth keeps her from running for president. (If Bush redefines life as beginning at conception, can we say she was conceived on this side of the border?)

And finally, let’s not forget North Carolina, where Elizabeth Dole was elected to the Senate. In a skirt.

For much of her life, Dole juggled the roles of political wife and political operative. Remember 1996 when Elizabeth was pitted against Hillary as the spouse match-up? Remember the magazine that had a poll asking who would make a better first lady as if wifedom were a political office?

Today both of them have made their way to the Senate. One double bind has loosened its grip. Now, how about the others?