Looking beyond “Women for…”

January 3, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Internet Media, Politics

From Iowa blogger Essential Estrogen, on the day of the Iowa Caucus:

Listen to the national media long enough and you’ll soon be convinced that I’m one of the hottest commodities available in this presidential election. First, I’m a resident of Iowa. Second, I’m a woman. It is true that I was contacted by every Democratic campaign (and a couple of Republican ones as well) and asked to join their “Women for …” group. Over the summer, I spent hours in small meetings, visiting with leadership of said women’s groups. Those who participated were told that the feedback garnered from those meetings was invaluable, that the views expressed by the women involved were going to be taken back to the top of the campaign and integrated into the messaging, plans and forthcoming white papers. Some of it was. Unless the other meetings held across the state of Iowa were drastically different from the ones I attended, very little of the substance of those meetings was converted to policy.

Women who attended the meetings, even those who remain firmly committed to the candidate hosting the meeting, still sometimes wonder where that information went or if it went anywhere at all. We asked to hear about reproductive health — not just abortion, but the full gamut of reproductive health issues — and have yet to see one white paper with that title. We asked for details concerning everything from early childhood learning to veterans’ benefits to protecting family farms. We asked for a great deal. We gained very little.

Who would have guessed that the elderly woman on the Wendy’s commercial who demanded, “Where’s the beef?!” so many years ago would be so in tune with women today?

Contrary to radio entertainers who fill the day with notices of the “chickafication” of everything from the economy to the media, the best-kept secret of the women’s community is that women’s issues are human issues. We don’t just care about families, contraception, security or education.

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