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1 1 (September 2015)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaacf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Voum 11 Isu * Sepe br21 Political Women: Looking Back, Looking Forward I. In 1972, our late AEI colleague Jeane Kirkpatrick con- ducted the first systematic study of the views and experiences of female career politicians. When she wrote Political Woman, her 1976 book based on the study, no woman had been nominated for president or vice-president by a major party and no woman had served on the Supreme Court. There were no women in the Cabinet, no women in the Senate, no women governors of major states, no women mayors of major cities, and no women in the top leadership posts of either party. Except for a presidential nomination, all of these barriers have since been surmounted, and today, women win elections at every level of our politics just as often as men do, though men still outnumber women in political office. The challenge that remains, as Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox documented in their 2001 and 2008 surveys, is getting more women to run. Coincidentally, around the time Kirkpatrick conducted her study, Virginia Slims began surveying national attitudes about whether women or men in public office would do a better job handling certain issues. They repeated many of their 1971 questions in 1989 and 1999, and the Pew Research Center asked some similar questions in 2014 (pages 2 and 3 of this report). Today, solid majorities say there would be no difference in the way women and men in high political offices would handle key issues. The movement on these questions helps to explain why 78 percent in a new CBS News/New York Times question (page 4) say America is ready to elect a woman president, up from 40 percent 20 years ago. In Gallup's trend, around 95 percent of men and women say they are willing to vote for a woman for president (page 5). Questions about electing the first female president pro- duce different responses depending on wording. Recent polls show Hillary Clinton has lost ground nationally in terms of favorability, honesty, and trustworthiness. She is still more popular among women than men, as she has been through- out her career. II. If present trends continue, more women than men will vote in 2016, so how women will vote matters. In 2012, women were 53 percent of the electorate, while men were 47 percent. A gap in the voting preferences of men and women-the famed gender gap-has existed since 1980 (page 7). Women are generally more Democratic in voting and men more Republican, but neither sex is a monolithic group. In 2012, for example, white women voted for Mitt Romney, while minority women voted solidly for Barack Obama. A big gender gap does not guarantee victory. The gap was about the same size in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won, as it was in 1996, when Bob Dole lost. Party trumps sex in voting preferences. The marriage gap is larger than the gender gap. Married voters (about two-thirds of voters in 2012) are more Repub- lican than nonmarried voters, who look more Democratic than they did twenty years ago (page 8). Nonmarried voters, many of whom are young, are less reliable voters than mar- ried voters. Nonmarried women lean heavily Democratic, and are a key constituency for Democrats in 2016 (page 9). They did not turn out in significant numbers in 2014. So what pulls many women in the Democratic direction and many men toward the GOP? There are some areas where they differ consistently (page 10). For example, women are less in favor of the use of force than men, and women generally favor a stronger role for government. But in many areas including abortion, the differences are small (page 11). Looking ahead to 2016, women and men rank the economy highest as important to their vote (page 12). III. Both parties are making efforts to recruit women, and they provide them with ample resources in competitive races. The Center for American Women in Politics, which commis- sioned Jeane Kirkpatrick's book, provides a useful update of her statistics. Although no woman has gotten a major party nod for president, two have been nominated for vice presi- dent: Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008. Four women have been Supreme Court justices, three of whom currently sit on the Court. There are seven women in the Cabinet or in Cabinet-level positions, 20 in the Senate, six serving as governors, 17 as mayors of our hundred largest cities, and a handful of women in leadership positions in the parties. Women have made large gains at the state level. In 1971, women made up 4.5 percent of state legislators; this year, they are 24.3 percent. Many women serve as primary or senior campaign advisers. And, if 2012 is a guide, at least as many women as men will be part of the press posse, once called the boys on the bus. A MERICA N E N. 110-eenee-- Sret NW W shigtn DC 2006 * 20 .250 : * ww .ei.r

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