The Spanish defence minister is a she: Carme Chacon. Appointed last April by President Zapatero she took with good grace loads of sexist crap (some of it patronising, some of it just plain rude) occasioned by the fact she was seven months pregnant at the time.

Now, the Independent reports, Chacon has committed a terrible “gaffe” by saying Spain is pulling its whole 600 troops out of (a NATO total of over 15,000) from Kosovo. As defence minister that sounds like the sort of thing she’s entitled to say as and when she pleases, right? Oh no.

Apparently the Americans weren’t tipped off first and threw a wobbly:

Ms Chacón’s action prompted a dressing down from a US state department spokesman who said he was “deeply disappointed in Spain” – an expression he repeated a blistering four times in a single press conference.

“Dressing down”? This isn’t school we’re talking about, Chacon is not a child being sent to the headmaster’s office. She is the defence minister of one of Europe’s largest nations. To use that infantilising expression is insulting. The story here should be: who the hell does America think they are? Who died and made them god of when Spain chooses to make policy announcements?

Instead of telling the US to get stuffed Zapatero has “dispatched his senior foreign policy advisor, Bernadino Leon, to Washington to extinguish the diplomatic flames”. Way to back your team, Presidente.

Unfortunately, this is how it is. Anything a woman does or says can and will be used against her in the court of public opinion. The more powerful that woman is the more vicious and hateful her detractors will be. Male politicians have been cocking things up since the beginning of time, yet they carry on. But when a woman makes a real, or imagined, “mistake”  the Royal Order of Men instantly decrees them unfit for duty.