Politics: Not All Women Think Alike

With Election year in full swing and Preliminaries coming to Kentuckiana most pollsters have one question on their mind when it comes to the female vote- Will they side with sisterhood? The media calls groups like NOW to represent “women’s” opinions. NOW doesn’t represent women in general; just those who tend to be left sided.

1992 was dubbed “the year of the woman” by the mainstream media, due to the historic election of twenty-four new women to the House of Representatives, five to the Senate, and the swell of female voters.1 While 1992 may be pop-cultures official “year of the woman”, news stories regularly speculate about the next occurrence of this political phenomenon, or how women will once again wield such political prowess at the ballot box.

Part of women’s fabled political power undoubtedly thrives from the politically correct media, which was thrilled with the result of 1992’s elections.

American women hold great political power, and women constitute just fifteen percent of members of congress. According to CNN’s exit polls women aggregated more than fifty-four percent of all votes in the last presidential election. Women nearly evenly divided between the two candidates- with forty-eight percent of women voting for President Bush and fifty two percent voting for Senator Kerry.

Gallup’s tracking poll during the run up to the 2004 presidential election showed that while men’s support varied, men were relatively unvaried in giving President Bush between a five and a fifteen percentage point edge. Woman’s support fluctuated much more wildly. Senator Kerry at one point in the campaign enjoyed a seventeen percentage point advantage among women, but just two months later, women gave President Bush a double digit lead.

It isn’t just the numbers that make women influential. Women remain undecided voters for longer and are more open than men to supporting different candidates; women are therefore called “swing voters”.

Women, like men are politically divided, splitting nearly evenly between the two common parties. Women also don’t vote based on “women’s issues”: their primary concern is the economy and homeland security, just like men. Women also aren’t automatic supporters of Hilary, or any other female because of her gender - she has to earn our vote, just as it should be.

When political strategists talk about appealing to women’ they refer to “women’s issues”. Among the list of these so-called hot button issues for women are abortion, childcare, the gender gap, and workplace discrimination. President B. Clinton was seen as a master at using these issues to win over the majority of the female vote.

In 2004’s election, female strategists complained that Senator Kerry wasn’t doing enough to talk about “women’s issues”. One article late in the campaign stated: “It wasn’t until late in the presidential debates that Kerry even began to reach out to women. Finally, to the satisfaction of women’s groups Kerry firmly established himself as pro-choice and pledged to do something about the wage gap that has women earning about 72 cents for every $1 a man makes.” Gloria Steinem echoed these complaints: “He’s at the mercy of consultants who are worried about the white male vote… so he talks about Military leadership. In the process, he neglects the majority of women’s issues”.

The feminist assumption is that women care about different things than men, but top voting polls told a different story during the last presidential election. Remarkably women’s top voting priorities were similar to men’s; women were most concerned about security issues, the Iraqi war and the economy. Contrary to what most feminist groups claim, abortion was not a top consideration for most female voters. In a Marie Clare poll taken in October before the