Female voters, meet female candidates

In the years since the women’s suffrage movement and since women were finally granted the right to vote in 1920, the question of what women want has entered the political spectrum. The question of what women want in the world of politics has become, do women vote based on gender or based on policy? The answer: Women have very different backgrounds and beliefs and, therefore, can never come together as an entire group to back a specific candidate, no matter his or her gender or policy.

JoNel Aleccia’s article, “When XX Marks the Ballot: Six Gender Myths,” outlines several myths surrounding the tendencies of women voters. Her number one and three myths are “Women vote as a group” and “Women favor female candidates.” She uses these myths to argue that no, women do not vote the same way based on their gender.

Aleccia argues that women are unlike predictable ethnic, religious or racial groups and do not share a general geographical place or philosophy. While one can bet an evangelical white person living in the Midwest will vote for a conservative Republican candidate or a black single-parent living in an urban city will vote for a semi-liberal Democrat, there is no set pattern that women’s votes can be graphed by. She cites political science professor, Karen Beckwith, who teaches at Case Western Reserve University, who explained that a woman’s support of policies is shaped my many factors, not just by her gender: “Women’s political preferences, attitudes and partisan choices are heterogeneous and vary along race, ethnic and class lines,” Beckwith said. And when women are categorized, Allecia argues, they are lumped into obscure groups like the “soccer moms” and the “security moms”. She points to assistant professor Maryann Barakso, who teaches political science at the University of Massachusetts. She says that categorizing women in this way does not give any information of a woman’s background and therefore cannot and does not give sufficient evidence as to the way in which she will vote. Women have different family and work needs from each other and will vote differently from each other to support policies that help their needs.

Julia Baird echoes the notion that women do not vote together in her article, “From Seneca Falls to…Sarah Palin?: Odd, yes, but there we are. Still, history suggests issues of policy will ultimately trump the politics of identity,” which appeared in Newsweek in late September 2008, by giving a brief history of the tendencies of female voters, showing that, even though there were not many female candidates to support, they were not voting collectively as a gender. When women won the vote in 1920, she says, they voted in much the same way as men. They were mostly conservative and did not come together to support women’s issues in particular. It was argued that they aligned with their husbands’ political views. But Baird argues that as female politicians began emerging within different political parties through the next 50 years, it became clear that women were not voting with their husbands, they were even thinking differently from each other about politics. The 1980 presidential election marked the first time that women voted in higher numbers than men. It also showed a slight shift in a more liberal direction.

But women were not voting for other women, Baird says. She gives the example of the 1984 presidential race between Republican Ronald Regan, who was up for presidential reelection, and Democrat Walter Mondale, the former vice-president. Mondale chose Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his vice-presidential pick, marking the election as the first time a woman was nominated for the position by a major-party (Marietta Stow was the first. She ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1884, 12 years after Victoria Woodhull ran for president on the same Party’s ticket in 1872). However, polls that year showed that 56 percent of women voted for Ronald Regan that year, up 10 percent from 1980. Ferraro had said that it seemed women to be intimidated by her. “…If I could do all these things—be a supermom or whatever (Ferraro had three teenagers at the time of her nomination)—how would it look for them, if ‘all’ they were doing was taking care of their children at home?” she said of women’s response to her candidacy. Ferraro alienated theses women because she did not have the same needs as they did. They felt that she would not properly represent them and would not fight for the things they needed.

Baird’s argument helps dispel Allecia’s third myth about women voting for female candidates based on gender. Women were not gathering in support of the Democratic ticket because there was a female vice-presidential candidate. They voted for Reagan because his economic platform targeted single and married working women and successfully won them over—they were more interested in bettering the economy than the were with the gender of the candidates. She argues that if we look at national races between 1990 and 2000, we will see that women vote by party, not by gender. She uses Kathleen Dolan, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to explain that even though it may seem like women support other women, it is usually because they are voting Democratic (the democrats are responsible for having 60 to 65 percent of female candidates).

It would seem that not only do women not vote alike, they do not vote for female candidates. But how, then, do we explain the shift of women to the McCain ticket following his announcement of Sarah Palin as his running mate?

Before she suspended her campaign to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States on June 7, 2008, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had the support of 51 percent of registered women in America according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll—24 percent supported the then Senator Barrack Obama. After Senator Clinton’s concession, the women who supported her policies began to support her fellow Democrat, but only by a small increase. A Gallup Poll daily tracking between June 5 and June 9 showed that 51 percent of registered women preferred Senator Obama to Senator John McCain, only a three point increase from the same poll given between May 27 and June 2.

However, when Senator McCain announced Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate on August 29, there was a shift in the polls. While black, Hispanic, and Asian women still favored Senator Obama—91 percent, 53 percent and 60 percent respectively, according to Gallup Poll daily tracking—white women started backing the McCain-Palin ticket. McCain gained a 12-point increase among white women by the Republican Convention in early September, from 42 percent to 53 percent, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. One in every three white women said that they would vote for John McCain because of his decision to choose Palin as his vice president. News media organizations around the world were calling this phenomenon the “Sarah Palin effect”.

The explanation: Women were drawn to Palin because of her iconic status as a working-mom. She became a role model for conservative women across the United States: women who aspire to be a mother and have a successful career. Palin has five children including a son serving in Iraq and a newborn with Down syndrome. It is reported that Palin returned to work as governor of Alaska only two days after giving birth. She is a high-status woman that has the sincere support of her husband who holds a job that allows him to spend time with his children.

In her Wall Street Journal article, “Houses of Worship: Sarah Palin Feminism,” Naomi Schafer Riley says that most conservative women wholeheartedly support the idea of women in the workplace. She says that even the most traditional of women are embracing the idea. A 2001 UCLA survey of freshman women at non-Catholic religious colleges showed that less than one-fifth agreed with the statement “the activities of married women are best confined to the home and the family.” More than half of the respondents said they were “born again Christian.” Sally Quinn of the Washington Post explained that “evangelical women also will have to decide if they will vote against their conscience by voting to put the mother of young children in a job outside of the home that will demand so much of her time and energy.” But, according to Baird, while a Pew Research Center survey given this summer found that only 20 percent of Republicans would support a candidate who was the mother of school-aged children, women scrambled to Palin’s defense when her capability to take on both responsibilities. Her nomination made conservative women feel empowered and “validat[ed] all moms and what they do each day—and what they might be capable of.” After McCain’s announcement of Palin as his vice-presidential nominee, voter approval of the decision shot to 61% of Republican voters, according to a Rasmussen Report. Voters said she brought an energy and enthusiasm to the Party.

So in the case of conservative women, it is true that they jumped on the Palin band-wagon. But that is just it: conservative women were supporting Palin because she is a woman. So they are still within their political alignment since she was on the Republican ticket. However, shortly after the Republican National Convention on Sept. 3, Palin’s approval rate dropped—41% of Republican woman thought that Palin was not the right choice for the vice-presidency. Following a number of gaffs (including admitting to not having a regular news source and saying Africa is a country rather than a continent), Palin showed that she was unprepared for the position. A Rasmussen Report showed that a whopping 85% of voters believed that Palin had enough experience under her belt to take on the role of president, should she be called upon to take over for 72-year-old McCain.
During an exclusive interview with the Sarah Palin, CBS’s Katie Couric asked if the vice-presidential candidate thought of herself as a feminist. Palin agreed heartily with Couric, saying she is “a feminist who believes in equal rights” and that women “have every opportunity a man has to succeed”. However, Palin is not a strong proponent of equal pay or universal health care, and while she was mayor, the city of Wasilla, Alaska charged women for rape examination kits. Though she benefited from Title IX, which says, "No person in the United States shall on the basis of sex, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance," by playing basketball in college, she does not support it or affirmative action.

These policies are the main reason that more women did not rally behind Palin simply because she is an icon of modernity for women; she alienated herself from feminists and working-class women alike. In her Wall Street Journal article, “Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin,” Cathy Young explains that by not supporting basic and key women’s issues such as equal pay, Palin lost any chance of bringing the feminist woman’s support. Similarly, she had no chance of gaining support from lower-income women since she opposed universal health care and did not promote day care centers. Clinton, on the other hand, is not only an icon being a strong and successful mother herself, was a champion for working women. A Washington Post-ABC poll taken in May and June of 2008 showed that Clinton had support from the majority of lower-income women; her policies were geared toward this group, making her iconic status more than just an image.

Katherine Marsh, who writes for The New Republic, says that the facts that Palin has “an incredible support system—a husband with a flexible jobs rather than a competing career (Todd Palin was a production supervisor British Petroleum. He took a leave of absence to stay home with the Palin children, and later took a non-managerial position that gave him flexible hours)…and a host of nearby grandparents, aunts and uncles.” She argues that because Palin does not need any help outside of her family, she does not support government policies that would help less fortunate working mothers. Women leaning to the left were not about to change their beliefs on policy just to support a female candidate who did not share their needs for childcare.

It is said that the McCain campaign decided to name Palin as the nomination for vice-president to try to win over Clinton supporters. It made Palin’s image speak for itself. After her speech at the Republican convention, she was kept under wraps in order to let her iconic status resonate. She had an aura about her that was shattered when she became the “attack dog” in Valentino skirt suits and flirty red heels and began to talk about policies. It became very clear, very quickly, that she was not prepared to take on the position as vice president. And her policies were not aligning with the status she was putting off. And the idea that women do not cross party lines simply to vote for a member of their own gender, Aleccia says, explains why the “shift” in the polls following the Republican convention was just a mere hiccup of excitement. It was not a big enough shift to validate the idea that women vote for female candidates.

The answer to the question of whether women vote for candidates based on gender or based on policy is yes and no and can be answered by looking at the 2008 presidential election. Though both Senator Clinton and Governor Palin were backed by many female voters—making it seem the women vote for female candidates—women stuck with their respective political affiliations. Women were not changing their political views or political party to back a female candidate, but they were supporting them nonetheless. Sarah Palin’s iconic status as a “hockey mom” made conservative women feel empowered; they felt like they were proving to the country and the world at large that, yes, women can do it all.

Consequences of High-Speed Information Gathering--Revisited

One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning—after showering and brushing my teeth of course—is hop on the Internet. I absolutely have to check my email and see if there are any big headlines in the news. However, when I do find some news that interests me, I try to find the shortest, most concise article as possible.

I find myself skimming through articles that are more than two or three pages. I convince myself that any important information should be contained in a paragraph or two. These days it is rare for me to sit down with the Sunday edition of my local paper. And curling up on the couch with a novel has become a thing of the past.

In his July 2008 article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr, whose writings follow technology and culture, argues that the problem with our everyday online search for high-speed information has re-circuited our brains to take in information in a seemingly more efficient way, but it at the cost of our ability to engage in deep thinking. All of the “bouncing” around from link to link does not give us a chance to really take in words and process the information a hand. And the way we take in information online—in short, quick snippets—is dictating how we take in information in all sorts of different media.

Carr cites media theorist Marchall McLuhan, who in he 1960’s said that media do not simply supply information, but instead “shape the process of thought.” So as Carr and the rest of us fly through the information we gather online, our brain processes are adapting—or devolving.

“And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swift moving stream of particles.” -Carr

The practicality of, and our ability to sit down with a novel has diminished, as long blocks of text have become an impenetrable wall for our minds. We need short, informative sentences to relay information. Our brains are becoming machines that go into overload when asked to dive deep into a text and extract meaning.

Carr explains that in order to appease our minds’ want for information snippets, media all over the place are changing format.

“Television programs as text crawls and pop-u ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets.” -Carr

He looks at The New York Times’ decision in March 2008 to have two full pages in every edition filled with short, “abstract” article. The explanation given by The Times was that these articles would serve as a more efficient way of relating the day’s news than going through the motions of turning each page and reading every article. Carr says that old media, like newspapers, have no choice but to start emulating their more modern counterparts.

According to The Newspapers Designer’s Handbook, sixth edition, by Tim Harrower, the four key elements to a modern looking paper are modular layout, color, packaging and, of course, informational graphics. These graphics are meant to “make complex issues easier for readers to grasp.” And a reader’s favorite type of graphic is a fast-facts side bar, one that summarizes important information in the story. Like the “abstract article,” these graphics make information available in a short snippet so the reader does not have to dig into the text.

But by continuing to give into this new type of information gathering, reading and thinking, Carr argues we are missing out on the most important factor of reading: exercising the mind. The beauty of sitting down with a novel is the solitary time spent by one’s self, mulling over the imagery and ideas presented so eloquently. Sitting down with a piece of literature, working through arguments and counter-arguments, is the greatest way to expand the mind with knowledge.

“In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,’ we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.”

The country may be on its way to a cultural dis-enlightenment. The ability to have the patience--and the drive--to read in depth novels, journal entries, and other literary works means the ability to process information and leads to creativity. If we continue down this path of "hurry up and tell me what I want to know" reading, we will slowly deteriorate into beings that need to be hand fed information.

Students will no longer be able to read the scholarly articles necessary for writing a clear argument in their class papers. They will rely on short, easy to read blurbs authored by questionable sources. Wikipedia will become a main source of information, not a background source to help give a basic understanding of materials. Ideas will be unfounded and lack crucial details that only texts written by experts can give.

Carr does concede that, like opponents of the written word and the printing press, he may be over thinking the evils of online reading, and that “from our hyperactive, data-soaked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom.” It may be true that Google-ing—being able to gather small bits of information, piecing them together in a spider web of information—shows our brains ability to sort out information. We are able to evaluate what is presented in front of us to get rid of non-reputable sources and to retrieve precisely what we are looking for

But what it really comes down to is exercising the brain, and not rewiring it to think like a computer. We should be striving to be intellectuals—to be making inferences and about the things we are reading—not just minute-experts.

Carr’s argument that all the Internet reading and gathering of information is having an effect on how we think is very true. We rely so heavily on quick sources of information that we are beginning to lose are abilities to make our own inferences about the words we are reading. It is important for the “reading to expand the mind” way of thinking to not be forgotten.