Is Obama’s victory the end of gender?

January 3, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Politics 

UPDATE: I apologize if I misquoted Lawless. I just found this quote from her clarifying the “women for vote women” argument:

Women do tend to vote for female contenders, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a gender preference, explains Jennifer Lawless, a political scientist at Brown University who studies women candidates. What happens, she says, is that women are more likely to vote for Democrats, and women candidates are more likely to be Democrats.

Lawless believes that Clinton will actually face challenges in attracting women primary voters. For starters, all the candidates are Democrats, so the party-label advantage goes away.

“Women tend to prefer outside candidates,” Lawless says. “Hillary Clinton is not the outside candidate. She’s the establishment candidate.” Women are also more likely to back liberal candidates. “Clinton’s by far not the most liberal of the bunch.”

I do not want to overstate Iowa’s importance. But last night in Iowa, “Obama got 35 percent of women voters, compared to 30 percent for Clinton and 23 percent for Edwards. This despite the fact that Clinton focused her campaign on bringing fellow women to the polls.” I have not yet seen the age splits on these numbers, but I wonder if this signals a shift in the perception of how women vote. At any rate, Clinton’s “You go girl” message was just not enough to get a majority of women to vote for her, and that’s a good thing. My concern is that much of the political science literature, and certainly the messaging of women’s groups like EMILY’s List, indicates the women want to vote for women. You see, we read many statistics that when women are running for office, more women come out to vote*. But Iowa’s results belie this. Others aren’t surprised at Obama’s win with women.

My friend Maria, a political scientist cum consumer marketing consultant says”The excitement of first woman president I don’t think resonates with younger folks - I think it’s more of an old school feminist appeal. I think generally younger people would be more excited by Obama’s multicultural background than Hillary as a woman.”

Lisa Stone, co-founder of BlogHer who’s been covering politics for a long time, wrote: “…in every survey I’ve ever done women decry the idea of voting for a woman just because of her gender. Especially boomers.”

Over on BlogHer, Marilyn from Land of Moo commented to me: “What’s mystified me over the last year+ of this campaign is why so many women DO support Hillary. Sometimes I wonder if they’re blinded by gender. For ME (just MY opinion), she has so many negatives that her gender can’t possibly overcome them. And I’m an old-school feminist.”

If it matters, my loyalties are very torn between Hillary Clinton, who I originally supported, and Obama’s message. It is very powerful indeed. I know I’m not alone tonight in feeling torn. And I don’t want to see Bill Clinton with Hillary - I want to see and hear from Hillary alone.

I still have ’til Feb 5 to decide…

The momentum and the sheer turnout in Iowa is exciting. 212,000 + who participated in the Democratic Caucus in Iowa- up from around 125k in 2004. Very cool.

*See Lawless, Jennifer L. and Richard L. Fox. It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (Public opinion on voting for a woman for President, see chart on 23).

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