In the Third World, where she has traveled widely, Hillary Clinton has become something of an icon of feminism. This makes her "stand by your man" response to allegations that her husband has cheated on her particularly distressing, writes PNS commentator Neera Sohoni from Bombay. Sohoni is a freelance author and writer living in Bombay.

BOMBAY -- She is the first lady of a nation that is supposed to lead the world's women in their "liberation" -- a woman long seen as a feminist and as the epitome of the modern day "professional" woman. Yet in response to charges that her husband has cheated on her, she has made a public display of loyalty to him, even joining in his denials.

This choice is reason to question seriously Hillary Clinton's credentials as leader for a reformed world for women, especially for me, as an Indian woman living in a still overwhelmingly traditional society.

Here, as in so many other areas of the world, women experience oppression almost entirely in the private life -- in their intimate relations. Achieving equality for women in the public realm has no immediate bearing on those whose knowledge of the larger world is limited to the television screen.

Watching Hillary Clinton on television, one sees her jump to the defense of her husband and his presidency. But there is an emptiness in her eyes, and also a sort of suppressed womanhood, as well as distinctive aloneness. One cost of being co-president is clearly the demise of a feminist United States.

During a recent two-month trip to the United States, I asked young people at Harvard and Stanford for their opinion of Hillary's behavior through the sex scandal traumatizing her and the presidency.

To my surprise, very few young women thought Hillary was being a doormat. Most said they thought the presidency has its obligations, and marital lapses should be put in perspective. As one of my own daughters remarked nonchalantly, "But mom, we don't look to the president for standards of morality or ethics."

But beyond ethics, what worried me was the lack of interest in assessing or criticizing Hillary's complaisance.

The possibility that the whole century of feminist rethinking of gender roles is a mistake or a fantasy is disturbing. The fact that this realization follows from observing America's First Couple is even more distressing. It is not so much the collapse of a Camelot as the devaluation of woman's status within marriage that the newest Clinton affair spotlights.

The first lady, this Hillary, is no different from an aunt or cousin or sister, someone we all grew up with. Faced with an abusive spouse, what did our mothers advise? "Go back to him, my dear. That is your home. He is your all." Seeing Hillary act out that advice is the biggest travesty of the current scandal. What is at stake here is not the ethics of sexual promiscuity but how a wife should deal with it in terms independent of her husband and child.

It is painful but necessary to discard Hillary as a feminist. She fails feminism because she placed herself last or least or less than her other incarnations -- as wife, as First Lady, as U.S. citizen coming eagerly to the defense of an "endangered" presidency.

If Hillary acts as she does -- stands by her man -- because she loves him or her daughter too much, then her claim to being a feminist is open to serious question. If she does it to protect his presidency, not just her man, then she can be charged with being a nationalist rather than a feminist. Finally, if she is being steadfast out of her own ambition, to stay in command as co-president, she again falls short of the feminist ideal -- an authentic feminist would be honorable only if she sought to hold power on her own, not as an icon with reflected glory.

If feminists and the women's movement feel let down by the present sexual scandal, they have both Clintons to blame, not just Bill Clinton.