GENDER POLITICS Undecided swing voters seek meaningful campaign BY AMY HAWTHORNE

The "Vaginas Vote" event — an evening of entertainment and "political empowerment" staged last month at Harlem’s Apollo Theater — got some press, most of it negative. The Boston Globe thought the gathering condescending for reducing women to a body part, while Salon considered it mainly an embarrassing affair headed by media-hungry Eve Ensler. In a year when a plurality of swing voters are women, and policy priorities have shifted — giving Republicans their first chance in two decades to narrow the gender gap — it’s fairly stunning that women and women’s issues get such a small degree of serious media attention.

The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University in New Jersey has recorded a gender gap in every presidential election since 1980. In each case, women voters favored the Democrat by anywhere from four to 12 percentage points more than men. A CAWP study during the ’90s shows that women cared more about issues, including government-sponsored social programs and restraint in using military force, that align with Democratic ideals. Some claim, however, that women’s priorities about the military and national security have shifted since September 11, making them much more likely to vote Republican than ever before. Republican pollster Lance Tarrance even claims this year’s gender gap is so miniscule as to be non-existent. A 10-point gender gap in a poll by EMILY’s List, which backs women candidates, suggests quite the opposite. The most accurate numbers, however, may come from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. They show a somewhat small, but steady gender gap of about six points throughout the convention season, even as voters’ inclinations swung back and forth.

So what are the campaigns’ strategies for dealing with this huge, powerful, and somewhat undecided group of voters? Pander and ignore seems to be the plan. In speeches targeting a female audience and through the "W Stands For Women" coalition site, the Bush campaign beats the usual drums of security and terrorism, talks about flex time for working women, and touts including a chosen obstetrician in health coverage. Not surprisingly, Melody Drnach, president of RI NOW, says this is just misleading rhetoric, adding, "I implore women to look at the facts."

The facts include changes in overtime laws and a continued low minimum wage, both of which disproportionately affect women, and the failure of Bush’s much-touted No Child Left Behind plan. In addition, Bush rarely touches on health issues specific to women’s reproduction, probably because he doesn’t want to scare pro-choice voters. Under this administration, ineffective and misleading abstinence-only sex-education has been heavily funded, pharmacists have been allowed to refuse birth control prescriptions on moral grounds, the FDA has denied over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, and the White House has slowly been chipping away at a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Referring to the lack of attention to such issues, Drnach says, "This is where I hold the media accountable. No one digs into the records. Actions speak louder than words."

But what of John F. Kerry? During his convention speech, Kerry directed Americans to visit his Web site for the details of his policies. Although the site includes detailed information on the Democrat’s stances on issues of concern to women, he has not targeted women’s issues very vocally. Drnach says that neither candidate is giving the appropriate amount of attention to domestic issues, nor spending enough time talking about women’s issues. It’s this kind of treatment from candidates that gives rise to events like "Vaginas Vote," where at least part of a woman gets some attention.