Clinton and Palin Encourage Women Politicos

Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin are an inspiration for women’s increased involvement in politics, a recent poll reveals.

by Ronni Mott
December 31, 2008

Women believe that Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin crashed a few glass ceilings in the Nov. 4 general elections. Despite the media treating them unfairly, concentrating far too much on hairstyles and clothing, the majority of women voters say that the two politicians have paved the way for more women to run for office in the future.

Those opinions and more emerged from Lifetime Television’s “Every Woman Counts” poll, which surveyed 600 women nationwide from Nov. 21 through 24, 88 percent of whom cast their votes in the November presidential election. The survey included questions asking why the women voted the way they did and their expectations for the incoming Barack Obama administration and 111th Congress, and zeroed in on the Clinton and Palin candidacies.

“Women, traditionally, don’t look all that different from men in the way they feel about the issues and what they place in importance,” said Dr. Ashleigh Powers, assistant professor of political science at Millsaps College, who is studying women and politics in Mississippi.

Nearly three-quarters of women polled said the economy must be the first order of business for the new president and Congress. That’s not particularly surprising given the turmoil of the global markets and recessions worldwide, but it represents a left turn from the top issue just one year ago: education. This year, every other issue—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, education—paled in comparison to the economy. Most women, about 60 percent, trust Obama to represent them and their values, but women’s issues, including pay equity, also took a back seat to the state of the economy.

“It seems that the economy, for everyone, is the key issue. So that is about what we’d expect, I think,” Powers said.

Half the women surveyed say that the downturn has already affected them, with more saying it will in the future. Rising energy costs were particularly troublesome. Among women who are currently retired or stay-at-home, a third believe they might have to re-enter the workforce to cover household expenses.

“Women suffer more in difficult economic times than men do, so focusing on that, concentrating on equal pay and health care (are) all good things that I saw in the (survey) summary,” said Jenni Smith, president of Mississippi National Organization for Women. She said that NOW is in the process of finalizing its legislative agenda for the 111th Congress, and is including many of the items that the poll revealed as women’s concerns. She emphasized that the economy is most definitely a women’s issue.

The majority of women voters (57 percent) made their decisions based on the candidates’ positions on the issues, with experience, values and party ideology all lagging behind. The historical significance of the 2008 elections entered into women’s voting decisions, with roughly a third of women who voted for Obama saying they considered his potential to become the first black U.S. president.

Of McCain voters, Palin’s prospective position as the first woman vice president swayed only 17 percent. Even fewer Republican voters, 9 percent, voted for the McCain-Palin ticket because of Palin’s gender.

Lifetime’s “Every Woman Counts” campaign launched about a year ago with three major goals: to get women registered and to the polls, to get them to run for office and to keep women’s issues in the political forefront, said Meredith Wagner, executive vice president of Lifetime Networks, during a Dec. 3 media teleconference.

The gender double standard is alive and well in politics, the poll revealed, with 65 percent of all respondents—crossing every demographic and political line—saying the public has different yardsticks for male and female candidates. The American people take women candidates less seriously, they said, and the media gives them less serious coverage. Voters perceive them as not having enough experience, or not being tough enough for political office.

“It was a post-gender election in terms of women looking beyond their gender as voters, but not in how women believe that male and female candidates were treated differently,” said pollster Kellyanne Conway of WomanTrend during the teleconference.

But the women surveyed were not immune to the stereotypes, believing it’s easier for men to address weighty issues on the campaign trail like national security, terrorism and the economy.

“There’s kind of an assumption of legitimacy for men in these areas that you don’t see for women,” Powers said, adding that often women who would otherwise be eligible don’t seem to have political ambitions.

The same double standard seems to permeate every woman’s campaign. An August Pew Research study indicated that while Americans believe women have more of what it takes to be leaders—honesty, intelligence, compassion and so forth—less than six percent believe women make better political leaders than men.

In the Lifetime poll, women agreed that qualifications should trump gender as Obama chooses his advisors. Smith said she would like to see the Obama administration continue to ensure that women are included at the highest level of government.

“President-elect Obama, through his Cabinet-level appointments, anyway, has made it clear that he is committed to having diverse voices, including women and people of color,” Smith said.

Women on both sides of the aisle thought the media did not provide enough information about Palin’s and Clinton’s policy positions, especially when covering Palin. Asked to compare coverage of Clinton and Palin to other candidates, 64 percent said the media was more negative about Palin than anyone else, with half the women saying the coverage was not substantive as well, focusing on their hair and wardrobe instead of where she stood on the issues.

“We hope that the media executives who are looking at (future coverage of women candidates) see that we don’t want to be discussing clothes and ankles,” Smith said. “We want to see the substance, the discussion on their positions and the issues.”

Still, women see the 2008 elections as a step toward electing the first female president in their lifetimes by a margin of more than 12 to one, and feel Clinton and Palin will encourage more women to run, having demonstrated that women have what it takes. Younger women especially, they said, will be more likely to take an interest in politics because of the two top female candidates in 2008.

“They see (those campaigns) as an avenue in a way that they might not have before,” Powers said.