It took a man to break the enamel ceiling in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a hard time in Kyrgyzstan recently. Before an audience of students and young professionals, she said, in reply to a question from a female lawyer, that “it requires, for a woman, usually in today’s world still, an extra amount of effort.” She went on to explain that people tend to be extra critical of a woman professional and how she dresses. Evidently Secretary Clinton was seen but not heard, because moments later, a member of the Kyrgyz media asked her which designers she prefers. She was not amused, and the journalist walked away chastened. If only John Boehner had been there. Hillary’s professorial moment happened as, back in Washington, the incoming Republican speaker of the House was announcing plans to build a women’s restroom near the House floor.

That’s right. We endured a national adulation campaign back in November 2006 after it became clear that House Democrats would give a woman the speaker’s gavel for the first time in American history. San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi told Katie Couric at the time: “As a woman, I’m very, very thrilled, because I carry a special responsibility. I’ve broken the ‘marble ceiling.’ This Congress is steeped in tradition and history, and it’s very hard for a woman to succeed to the level that I have, and I think it sends a message to all women that if this can happen, anything can happen.” She broke the “marble ceiling” — but evidently porcelain was beyond her power. The marble-ceiling talk was silly then, and that’s why I enjoy the ladies’-room story so much now.

Installing the restroom will cost money (though it’s not yet clear exactly how much). And the House parliamentarian will be uprooted. But Boehner is determined to build it (and the parliamentarian is happy to be a gentleman about it) while insisting that the overall budget will be decreased at the same time.

It’s an eye-roller of a story in a way. Women have been known to endure pain. Mother’s milk has been known to be patience. Surely female members of the House can handle walking across Statuary Hall to the restroom, even on bad-hair days. But in a city of symbols and symbolism, this is a practical move that takes a sledgehammer to the dishonest gender politics we’ve suffered through for far too long — a politics that insists that liberal women know best and that all women are liberal; a politics that had a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, say of now-Chief Justice John Roberts that “he’s good in every way, except he’s not a woman”; a politics in which the outgoing speaker, when questioned about her desire for a larger Air Force transport plane, cried sexism (“As a woman, as a woman speaker of the House, I don’t want any less opportunity than male speakers have had when they’ve served here,” she griped).

Boehner, by the way, is planning on flying commercial to and from his district. History may show it took a man to be a better steward of taxpayer money.

With his stubborn insistence that he will manage to cut the budget even with that construction project (which includes getting plumbing into an area of the Capitol that currently lacks it), he’s heeding the message of November’s election. Women are responsible and budget-conscious. Women have no patience with a Washington that isn’t. In her post-election analysis, pollster Kellyanne Conway found that “if the bailouts and spending at the beginning of the Administration were the tip of the iceberg, healthcare reform was the tipping point for women in questioning the priorities and fiscal sanity of this Administration. Women are the Chief Healthcare Officers of their households and control 2 out of every 3 dollars spent. They heavily populate the healthcare industry as workers, accounting for 95% of home health aides, 92% of nurses, 49% of pharmacists, half of medical students. Women did the math, noticing that the new healthcare reform plan would add 30 million new people to the rolls and not a single new doctor, and a price tag of $1 trillion and counting.”

Women accounted for almost half of the Tea Party movement because they, like men, are “concerned” and “frustrated” (not so much “angry,” according to Conway’s polling) about America’s future.

In her analysis, Conway found that “women hardly cared or noticed that there was a female speaker of the House”: “Nancy Pelosi practiced the type of hyper-partisanship, exclusiveness, and lack of transparency that offends women. By the time she lost her post, her approval ratings among men and women were more negative than positive.”

Boehner’s bathroom project is one practical and symbolic way of, well, as he might put it, cutting through a lot of hurtful and unnecessary “crap” in our politics and our culture. He’ll have a practical symbol of how far we’ve come, baby, right next to the House floor. Bipartisan and all.

Gone are the days when the conventional mythology had women all being liberal, demanding legal abortion, all the while pretending some kind of sameness with men that the sexual revolution had imposed and women are now regretting, as family and relationships suffer. Gone are the days when the conservative, pro-life woman was an anomaly. And gone, before too long, will be some of that “extra amount of effort” on heels on the Hill.

Secretary Clinton, the new male Republican speaker was listening. Restroom policy is not the biggest issue in the country or even on Capitol Hill, but it’s a symbol of one of the most significant stories of the year: a morning of new feminism in America — one that has no time for the mourning that liberal feminism has brought into American lives.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com. This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello.