As the “Weinergate” scandal unfolded over the course of the last two weeks, I couldn’t help but think, how many of these politicians DON’T engage in inappropriate sexual conduct?

It seems that every other month, I open the paper to yet another MALE politician engaging in some kind of sex scandal.  (Ensign, Vitter, Massa, Spitzer, Edwards, Schwarzenegger…etc.) What is it with these men?!

So, I started asking people why they thought men politicians are always the ones involved in these sex scandals, and not female politicians?  I started with my boyfriend, then my colleagues (both male and female), and then some close friends.  All gave somewhat similar answers and mostly agreed that it had a lot to do with the power politicians have, and that ravenous hunger for more.

So I started thinking, do women just not care about power?  I like power.  I like leading people, having people count on me, being in charge, being in a position to make a difference, having people know who I am and like who I am, etc.  You can ask my mother if you think I’m kidding  So is it really just the power trip?

One friend told me, “well women cheat too, they are just smarter and better at not getting caught.”  Maybe that’s a valid point, but the numbers just don’t seem to add up for that to be the one solid reason.  (For the record, tweeting a picture of your junk off of your official Twitter page is NOT SMART.)

Well, then I read this NYT piece over the weekend and I think it raises a VERY valid point, that may be an answer to the question:

Research points to a substantial gender gap in the way women and men approach running for office. Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw — all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected.

“The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.”

“I have no hard evidence that women are less likely to engage in risky or somewhat stupid behavior,” Ms. Pearson said. “But women in Congress are still really in a situation where they have to prove themselves to their male colleagues and constituents. There’s sort of this extra level of seriousness.”

And voters demand it. Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, says female politicians are punished more harshly than men for misbehavior. “When voters find out men have ethics and honesty issues, they say, ‘Well, I expected that,’ “  Ms. Lake said. “When they find out it’s a woman, they say, ‘I thought she was better than that.’ “

In a National Journal article this week, Justice Sotomayor spoke out about the sexist questioning she received during her confirmation hearings for the US Supreme Court:

After pre-approved questions from two Northwestern University School of Law professors, she was most revealing during questioning from law students, especially when one woman suggested that the questioning Sotomayor and the most recent other appointee, Elena Kagan, faced was laden with male-driven assumptions.

“You know, and I don’t mean to be graphic, but one day after I’d been questioned endlessly, for weeks at a time, I was so frustrated by the minutiae of what I was being asked about and said to a friend, ‘I think they already know the color of my underwear,’” the justice said.

“There were private questions I was offended by. I was convinced they were not asking those questions of the male applicants,” Sotomayor said, alluding to questions about her dating habits.

“I wondered if they ever asked those questions of the male candidates. But the society has a double standard.”

Sotomayor,who is single, then cited her “many single male colleagues who are judges who date often, bring dates to court affairs and nobody ever talks about them. I knew if I did the same thing, my morals would be questioned.”

Just as Sotomayor states, the double standard is everywhere and especially in the working world.  It seems men get applauded when they show up to a function with a tall bombshell one night, and a different one the next.  High fives all around! But if women does that, I’m almost positive her colleagues would look down upon her.

I’ll ask again, where did this double standard originate, and what can be done to diminish it?  Is it in our genes?  Is it from what we watch on tv? Or read in comic strips that fuels the fire?