
          Women and the '88 Elections
          By Hannon, SharronSharron Hannon
          Vol. 10, No. 1, 1988, pp. 1-3
          
          What role will women play in the '88 elections? Will the "gender
gap" resurface? Will it affect the outcome of the presidential
race?
          These are questions that candidates and political analysts might
well be pondering in the next several wasks, as Super Tuesday--the
March 8 date when primaries and caucuses will be held in twenty
states, mostly in the South--looms large on the horizon.
          To help focus their attention, the National Women's Political
Caucus gathered representatives from the presidential campaigns,
political consultants, pollsters and journalists for a day-long
conference in Atlanta in December.
          The purpose of the meeting, according to NWPC chair Irene
Natividad, was to "underscore the obvious"--the fact that women make
up a majority of voters in this country. In 1988, ten million more
women than men will be eligible to vote.
          Women's groups worry that these numbers are being either overlooked
or deliberately ignored by the candidates.
          "They act like they're afraid of the 'w' word--women," says
Natividad. "The omission of women from campaign rhetoric so far has
been the norm rather than the exception. Why don't they target the
largest clump of voters? Why is something so obvious being so
intensely ignored?"
          The silence is particularly evident in Super Tuesday states, she
notes, where candidates seem to be focusing instead on "Rhett
Butler--the white male in the South."
          This is not a winning strategy, according to participants at the
Atlanta meeting. They contend that the key to Super Tuesday is to find
a message that will resonate 

among women and minorities.
          To bolster the point, presenters at the conference deluged the
audience with statistics on voting patterns in the '80, '84 end '86
elections. For example:
In 1980, for the first time since women won the right to vote
in 1920, the same percentage of women voted as men (59
percent). Because more women than men are eligible to vote (since
women live longer and form a larger percentage of the population),
this meant that six million more women than men voted.Also in 1980, polling data revealed that women were thinking
and voting differently from men on a wide range of issues including
national security, the economy, the environment and education, as well
as women's rights issues. The "gender gap" was born, and has continued
to manifest itself during subsequent elections and polling on a
variety of issue areas.By 1984, leaders of seventy-six national women's organizations
had banded together for a registration, education and get-out-the-vote
drive. The Women's Vote Project aimed to register one and a half
million new women voters from among the thirty million eligible but
unregistered female population. The goal was exceeded, with more than
1.8 million women registered, and the post-election Census Bureau
report confirmed a significant increase: 61 percent of all eligible
women voted--a 2 percent increase from 1980 and 2 percent higher than
men, whose level remained at 59 percent. Seven million more women than
men voted.In 1986, women's votes (in combination with votes by
minorities in some cases) provided the winning edge in nine key Senate
races--five of these in Southern states. The beneficiaries were all
Democrats and include John Breaux (L Louisiana), Wyche Fowler
(Georgia), Bob Graham (Florida), Terry Sanford (North Carolina) and
Richard Shelby (Alabama). Women voted in greater numbers than men in
all twenty Super Tuesday states.
          While these statistics point to potential political clout for
women, the operative word here is potential. Some political pundits
are still inclined to write off the gender gap, pointing out that it
failed to defeat Ronald Reagan in '84.
          Activist women's groups acknowledge that the women's vote is not
monolithic. Race, age, income and education level are among the
factors other than sex that figure into voting patterns. Still, they
bristle at being labeled a "special interest" group.
          "We are here to remind the candidates that we are not a special
interest; we are more than half the population," said Missouri
Lt. Gov. Harriett Woods, echoing the sentiments of many at the NWPC
gathering in Atlanta.
          Woods attended the meeting both as an NWPC member and as a
representative of Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt
(she is co-chair of the campaign for her fellow Missourian). All six
Democratic candidates sent stand-ins, though only Bob Dole was
represented on the Republican side. And each, in turn, was given an
opportunity to make a pitch for her candidate.
          In addition, the NWPC's Democratic and Republican task forces
released reports on the candidates, covering not only where they stand
on such issues as ERA, choice, child care and pay equity, but also
data on how many women are on their campaign staffs and what their
positions and I salaries are. "Equal opportunity cannot begin after
the election," said Ann Lewis, chair of the Democratic task force
and former executive director of Americans for Democratic Action.
          Not surprisingly, the Democratic candidates all ranked considerably
better than their Republican counterparts on support of the issues,
with Jesse Jackson, Michael Dukakis and Paul Simon rated as the
strongest backers of women's rights in the task force reports.
          Perhaps surprisingly, women are well-represented on the campaign
and office staffs of nearly all the candidates (information on Pat
Robertson and Alexander Haig was not available for the reports). Women
hold close to half of the positions overall and their salaries are
competitive with men on the staffs.
          The highest ranking woman is Susan Estrich, Dukakis's campaign
manager. She is the first woman in history to run a major presidential
campaign. Women in the Dukakis campaign hold twenty-seven of the top
forty-nine paid positions.
          "We're running the darn thing," Deputy Political Director
Alice Travis, an active NWPC member, told her colleagues in
Atlanta. "We're in charge at last and how sweet it is."
          The Democratic task force report also notes endorsements from
prominent women. Again Dukakis fares particularly well, with support
from Gov. Madeleine Kunin of Vermont, Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy of
Massachusetts, Secretary of State Elaine Baxter of Iowa, former New
York City' councilperson Carol Bellamy, and more than one hundred

female state legislators from twenty-two states.
          While endorsements and the placement of women on their staffs may
help candidates attract women to their campaigns, neither is
necessarily enough in itself
          "It'a great to have women in high positions, but what about the
rest of us?" asked a Florida NWPC member who had recently attended
her state Democratic convention. "I went to each candidate there
and not one had a piece of literature with them that spoke to women's
issues."
          Harriett Woods, co-chair for Gephardt, defends the candidates from
the charge that they are not speaking to women.
          "In the debates so far, no one has asked the right
questions," she says. "The dialogue has been controlled by the
interviewers."
          Still, she acknowledges a need to get the candidates to put forth
such issues as child care--which polls show to be an overwhelming
concern among women.
          The candidates will receive more than a little nudge in this
direction in January. First, U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder will launch a
"Great American Family Tour" on the 1 7th with funds raised during her
exploratory campaign for president. Along with pediatrician-author
T. Berry Brazelton and "Family Ties" producer Gary David Goldberg, she
will travel to Portsmouth, N.H., four Southern cities, and Iowa to
talk about the parental leave bill which she is currently sponsoring
in Congress.
          Schroeder's aim is to get this and other "family issues" into the
forefront of political debate.
          "Everything we used to call women's issues are really family
issues," she notes. "If you're shortchanging women, you're
shortchanging everybody."
          Next, from Jan. 22-24, more than thirty women's organizations will
sponsor a "Women's Agenda Conference" in Des Moines, two weeks before
the Iowa caucuses. The presidential candidates have been invited to
speak on child care, pay equity and other issues. The conference was
initiated by the National Federation of Business and Professional
Women's Clubs (BPW), a group that has rarely been involved in national
politics.
          Executive director Linda C. Dorian describes BPW as "a sleeping
elephant that's getting roused up"--an interesting metaphor since
54 percent of the group's members identify themselves as
Republicans.
          Another road show--the "Feminization of Power Campaign" run by
Eleanor Smeal, former president of the National Organization for
Women--will continue on its nationwide tour with stops in Georgia and
Florida planned for early '88. Launched last October, the tour has
already traveled to Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati,
Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Raleigh, drumming up feminist candidates to
run for office at all levels.
          A special feature of the tour's rallies is a request for each
person in attendance to take a pledge "not to work for, nor support
with my vote, money or time, any candidate who does not support and
work for women's rights and feminist principles."
          To help evaluate candidates, the Fund for the Feminist Majority,
which is sponsoring the Feminization of Power tour, has created a
pamphlet outlining "The National Feminist Agenda." The agenda is an
updated and condensed form of the "Plan of Action" drawn up at the
1977 National Women's Conference held in Houston.
          At the NWPC meeting in Atlanta there was also talk of putting
together a women's agenda to submit to the Democratic National
Committee in response to Chairman Paul Kirk's proposal for a shortened
party platform for '88.
          Women at the meeting viewed the proposal as yet another attempt to
sidestep issues.
          "It's the same thing he has been doing all along, which is to
dance away from what he considers the special interest issues that
have hurt the Democratic Party," said Irene Natividad. "It's
unfortunate because I think this election is the Democrats' to win or
lose."
          Various polls show that the Democratic Party holds a slight edge
among women. According to a "Southern Primary Poll" conducted for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 56 percent of those
intending to vote in the Democratic primary are women.
          But polls also show that women, in greater numbers than men, are
still window-shopping when it comes to the presidential race.
          "If the candidates' melanges are on the mark," asks
Natividad, "why are most women voters voting for a candidate called
'undecided'?"
          
            Sharron Hannon is a Georgia-based freelance writer, whose
work has appeared in numerous publications. For the past four years,
she has edited Southern Feminist, a newspaper covering
women's rights issues.
          
        