“John Edwards, specifically, as well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours they way they attacked her,” said Geraldine A. Ferraro, the 1984 vice presidential candidate who supports Mrs. Clinton. “It’s O.K. in this country to be sexist,” Ms. Ferraro said.

“It’s certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours — well, I don’t think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours.”

For all that, Mrs. Clinton has taken pains not to come across as complaining or suggesting that she felt victimized. She told reporters she thought the criticism of her occurred not because she was a woman, but because she was the front-runner, even as she used language that invoked feminist imagery.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Mrs. Clinton said at an event in Indianola, Iowa. “Well, I’m really comfortable in the kitchen, and I’m going to stay in there and absorb the heat.”

Still, her campaign responded, characteristically, on a less obvious and more forceful track that at least initially used an online “piling on” video to encourage a simple story line for the debate: Seven men versus one woman.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, R-Calif. [sic], said Monday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., hasn't been treated differently because she's the only woman in the presidential race, but added that her campaign appears to have been trying to exploit that perception in the wake of last week's Democratic debate.