In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Grubbs/Billings Gazette, Via Associated Press

Note: Stacy Schiff is the author of “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America” and the forthcoming “Cleopatra: A Life.”

Gail Collins: Stacy, it’s great to be conversing with you while David Brooks is on vacation. It’s the first time I’ve had a woman to talk with in this format.

Stacy Schiff: I’m delighted that David takes a vacation.

Gail Collins: I can’t resist the temptation to talk about women in politics even though I know we should be counterintuitive and debate the use of drones in antiterrorism operations.

Stacy Schiff: We can do that next time. Besides, I’m not sure topics divide neatly along gender lines when the individual tackling missile defense systems, nuclear nonproliferation and the Middle East is someone who once made national news with a chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I’ve been surprised by the argument over whether Sarah Palin or her Mama Grizzly candidates are feminists.

Gail Collins: Your new biography of Cleopatra is coming out this fall, right? I’m reading it, and I’m pretty sure that from now on, whenever I hear elected officials complain about the treachery of their opponents, I’m just going to say: “Ha! You should try being queen of Egypt in 40 B.C.”

Stacy Schiff: Red and blue states were nothing to a woman who not only played to two radically different constituencies but also knew she could be removed by Rome, deposed by her subjects, undermined by her advisers — or stabbed, poisoned and dismembered by her own family. On the other hand, Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word.

Gail Collins: One thing I’ve been surprised by during the current election season is the ongoing argument over whether Sarah Palin or her Mama Grizzly candidates could be regarded as feminists. Can I tell you how amazing it is to hear anybody fighting for the title?

Stacy Schiff: It is a word that can clear a room, isn’t it? Maybe only “bedbugs” does so faster.

Gail Collins: Every time I go on a speaking tour I get questions from sad middle-aged women who want to know why their daughters all insist they aren’t feminists. They might be planning to devote their lives to healing fistula victims in Somalia, but they won’t let anyone call them feminists because they think it means being anti-man, or wearing unattractive shoes.

Stacy Schiff: Partly the word has been deliberately sullied, like “liberal” and “progressive.” It spells man-hating, militant, and, especially, no Manolos.

If it makes you feel better, I just texted my 17-year-old to ask if she considered herself a feminist. “If by feminism, you mean equality,” she answers, “then yes.” It’s not a word that appeals, because her generation thinks the work has been done. They’ve been reading articles about the End of Men. Somehow the news that men who work full-time make on average 23 percent more than women do seems to have escaped them.

Gail Collins: On the campaign front, all the talk about Mama Grizzlies makes it seem as if women are a bigger part of the current right-wing than they really are. Surveys show the average Tea Party supporter is a middle-aged man. There are still way more Democratic women running for high office than Republican. But they suffer from the lack of a cool name.

Stacy Schiff: And Mama Grizzlies sound so empowering! What woman doesn’t like the ring of that? Moms “do kinda just know when something’s wrong,” as Sarah Palin put it. (Ideally that category includes monitoring unprotected teenage sex under one’s own roof, but I digress, as you would say.) I’m all for saluting the maternal sixth sense, though I’m not sure I want a government run by intuition. We had one of those recently.

Gail Collins: Do you think the Mama Grizzlies really can be feminists? I don’t think you can throw a woman out of the club because she voted against the stimulus bill. But if feminism simply means supporting equal rights and equal opportunities for women, I don’t see how a feminist can be opposed to government programs that provide poor working mothers with quality child care.

Stacy Schiff: Exactly. The issue is no longer first-rate intellect, or first-rate temperament, but first-rate opportunity. Which is where the Mama Grizzly business really falls down.

What Mama Grizzly wouldn’t believe in school lunches, health insurance and quality childcare?

An actual grizzly mom is a single mom. She lends a whole new definition to full-time homemaker. If Dad shows up it’s probably to eat the kids. What Mama Grizzly wouldn’t believe in school lunches, health insurance and quality childcare? Who’s going to look after the kids while she’s off hunting? It’s really, really clever to put this powerful vocabulary — pit bulls and grizzlies — in the service of disempowering people. Kind of like death panels in reverse.

Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For scientists, or Supreme Court justices, or chief executives, or the woman who wants to learn to fly F-l8s off an aircraft carrier, it works differently.

Gail Collins: Also, having watched more than my share of professional wrestling clips over the past few months, I don’t think you can be a feminist and be head of a company where the announcer — who also happens to be your husband — tells a weeping woman to get down on her knees and bark like a dog. Sorry, Linda McMahon. Just can’t get my head around it.

Stacy Schiff: Well, I’ve sworn off wrestling for the summer, but an odd thing does seem to be happening in Hollywood: from “Up in the Air” to “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to “Salt” to “Eat Pray Love,” you have some pretty untame, independent-minded women out there. If I may paraphrase, all across the screen, women are standing up and speaking out. You don’t want to mess with these women any more than with a grizzly, period.