Mom never did end up in any sort of leadership position, not officially. Never mind that when she was a travelling salesman, she sold ridiculous amounts of stuff, or that when she became a dBase coder, she wrote some really good code; people kept telling her that she didn't have the "experience" to be a manager.
They were lying, of course. The real reason was that she was a woman.
The most common reason I see people give to vote for Hillary over Obama is that she has more "experience." I've seen it said plenty online, and several of the people who I caucused with mentioned it as well. I can't tell about the online folks, but at the caucus, every person who said that was a woman of Mom's generation. I'd bet that every one of those women heard that they "didn't have enough experience," right up until they started hearing "we're looking for someone younger and more dynamic."
"Experience" wasn't true then. It's still not true now.
There are real reasons to support Hillary Clinton in the primaries. The big one for me is that Obama's rhetoric about "unity" and "bipartisanship" makes me totally nervous. However, "experience" is.. a phantom. Not real. Neither Hillary nor Obama has ever been President of the United States before, they've been Senators for six and eight years respectively-- not a huge difference. They've each been activists for their entire adult lives. The way that the Repubs smeared Bill Clinton for his entire term is a matter of public record; Obama can study it just as well as Hillary can.