Is Obama’s victory the end of gender?

January 3, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Politics · Comment

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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Looking beyond “Women for…”

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

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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“I pretty much do whatever Oprah tells me to”

December 16, 2007 · Filed Under Feminism, Politics · 1 Comment

said Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon in 30 Rock, when asked what religion she practices. Seems she’s not alone:

Even before Oprah drew throngs in Iowa, the Des Moines Register poll showed Mr. Obama leading Hillary Clinton among women for the first time (31 to 26 percent) in late November. Now his surge is spreading. In New Hampshire, the Rasmussen poll after Oprah’s visit found that the Clinton lead among women had fallen from 14 to 4 percent in just two weeks. In South Carolina, where some once thought Mr. Obama was not “black enough” to peel away loyal African-American voters from the Clintons, he’s ahead by double digits among blacks in four polls. (A month ago they were even among African-Americans in that state.) Over all, the Obama-Clinton race in all three states has now become too close to call.

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Single women and voting, the myth that keeps on giving

December 10, 2007 · Filed Under Feminism, Internet Media, Politics · Comment

After I wrote a piece in the Huffington Post citing Margie Omero’s findings that single women vote more than single men, and we can’t be so incredibly one-sided about the whole thing: “There is indeed a “Marriage Gap” among women. Married people vote at a higher rate than non-married people. But the marriage gap is actually larger among men. According to Census reports from the 2004 election, married men are as likely to vote (63% turnout) as married women (65%). But unmarried men (which includes single, divorced, separated, and widowed) are substantially less likely to vote (46%) than unmarried women (55%). The marriage gap is 10 points among women, and is nearly twice that (18 points) among men.”I loved this post from Elisa:

“Well, turns out that first of all, we ALL don’t vote to a shameful degree, but further: unmarried women vote more than unmarried men do. and yet no one wonders if, as Morra puts it, all the unmarried men are too busy playing Guitar Hero to vote. (Which cracked me up on a personal level, given my S.O. plays Guitar Hero incessantly, and he wasn’t even registered to vote until I made him…and he rarely votes unless I physically drag gim. We’ll see if getting him a permanent absentee ballot…which I signed him up for…works.)”

Elisa, Guitar Hero assaults my eardrums daily. But at least it’s better than his previous favorite, Gears of War.

Anyway, today, I read an interview with Page Gardner, founder of Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote. It’s a great organization, to be sure, but it perpetuates a really sexist story, if Margie’s numbers are true. Yes, single women need to vote more. But so do single men. How come they get off the hook? How come major gatekeepers of our society (e.g, Harvard) perpetuate the storyline that women are less informed politically than men? It’s a great storyline, but a vicious cycle.

Let’s correct the assumptions, and then resume our get out the vote activities!

Support Donna Edwards for Congress

November 6, 2007 · Filed Under Feminism, Politics · Comment

Please take a moment to support Donna Edwards and tell our wimpy Congress to stand up. This is great email from Matt Stoller, BlogPac:

“I remember watching Nancy Pelosi sworn in as the first female Speaker of the House.Â What a moment, as the new Speaker surrounded herself with children and gaveled in what we thought would be new direction for America.Â While I knew that Democrats would have problems passing legislation, I didn’t realize that the Democratic leadership would capitulate so consistently to a President with a 24% approval rating without putting up a better fight.Â I thought impeachment was unlikely, but I didn’t realize they would expand his wiretapping authority, provide hundreds of billions of dollars of blank check war funding, and even approve of torture. But they did.

And so now it’s our time to show them that frustration is real, that we’re not going to be quietly taken for granted, and that Democrats must stand for the values on which they were elected or they will be removed from office.Â And that’s where Pelosi comes in, because she’s actively making the caucus worse.

Donna Edwards is a progressive primary challenger running to knock of a conservative Democrat named Al Wynn in Maryland’s fourth district, a heavily Democratic district.Â Wynn backed the Bankruptcy Bill, the Bush Energy Bill, and the war, and was a prime mover behind eliminating net neutrality and the estate tax.Â Last year, Donna nearly beat Wynn, losing by only 3 percentage points.Â This year, she is going to put the “better” into “more and better Democrats.”

Even with this clear progressive taking on an incumbent in a Democratic district, on Saturday, Nancy Pelosi held a fundraiser for Al Wynn.

A number of blogs - Dailykos, Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake among others, and ColorofChange.org, are raising $100K for Donna to counter Pelosi’s embrace of Wynn.Â So far, 1,969 people have given $89,757 to send a message to the Democratic leadership that they need to do their job.Â We just need a few more people to chip in to meet the goal.Â Would you put in $30 to build a better Democratic party?

http://www.actblue.com/page/betterdemocrats?refcode=Blogpac

I ran into Speaker Pelosi at an event yesterday, and when I mentioned this fundraiser, she turned her back on me.Â She is feeling pressure from this, real pressure that she cannot avoid.Â It’s not like the emails and phone calls we send to Congress.

Please chip in a few bucks if you can.Â This is working.”

http://www.actblue.com/page/betterdemocrats?refcode=Blogpac

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