Childless slur could cost Merkel winning margin

But with the final polls before Sunday's election showing a mere hair's breadth between her likely coalition and one that the centre-left Social Democrats might cobble together, it suddenly could matter. Sex, that is.

The fact of Ms Merkel's gender always lurked in the background, of course. But so long as she was winning, the prospect that Germany could have a woman chancellor was noted with more curiosity than disapproval. For some it was a plus point, and a sign that Germany had come of age. Not only could a woman now head a major party, she could lead it into government.

That was then. Now, chivalry, equal opportunities or political maturity - take your pick - have all been cast to the winds. The doubts many Germans secretly harboured about having a woman chancellor are surfacing in a nasty way.

The lowest "below-the-belt" blow was struck by her chief opponent's wife, Doris Schröder-Köpf, who told Die Zeit weekly that Ms Merkel "does not embody with her biography the experiences of most women".

She went on to mention childbirth, bringing up children, and schools. Ms Merkel has no children.

Gerhard Schröder himself has been careful never to comment directly on Ms Merkel's private circumstances - in fact, she is married, for the second time, to a chemistry professor from Berlin, Joachim Sauer. As a many-times married man with no children of his own - Doris has a teenage girl by a previous marriage, and together they adopted a Russian orphan two years ago - he is hardly in a position to criticise Ms Merkel.

But Mr Schröder has cheerfully let his wife's comments stand, insisting that she had every right to voice her own opinions. No less cheerfully, he has pointedly brought up the SPD's family-friendly policies in words very similar to those used by his wife. And while some voters, especially women of the "women's liberation" generation, have been repelled by this line of attack, Ms Schröder-Köpf's remarks have prompted others to question Ms Merkel's credentials - as a woman, and thus as a politician. Germany is still conservative in its attitudes towards women: fewer work, either full time or part time, than in Britain or France, and married women are expected to have children.

Ms Merkel has responded by stressing her party's family policies in her stump speech and announcing new tax breaks for children. She also gave an interview in which she was asked about not having children and answered that "it just didn't happen and I don't make a great thing about it". But damage has been done.

She is probably in a more difficult position than Margaret Thatcher or Hillary Clinton. Like them, she is regularly described as masculine, overbearing or disloyal - this last for the way she engineered the exit of her one-time patron, Helmut Kohl, the re-unifier of Germany, over a scandal about party funds. Unlike them, Ms Merkel is also taken to task for "feminine" weaknesses: "wavering" over her choice for finance minister, for instance.

That the lady is no actress need not be a failing in an age where people are said to hanker after truth and sincerity in politics. Up against Gerhard Schröder, whose charm, presentational brilliance and readiness to use every trick, she appears a rank amateur.

The truth is that if Ms Merkel fails to lead her party into government, her presentational inadequacy will be a real contributory factor. But the Chancellor's wife will also have had something to do with it.