Sunday, February 19, 2006
Getting Out the Women's Vote: What Will It Take?
A lot of pundits, particularly of the Democratic variety, have been pondering lately about how to get out the women's vote in 2008. It's an important question.
In a commentary published by Women's ENews last week, Alex Sanger, grandson of Margaret Sanger, the feisty founder of the modern "family planning" movement, observed that "the feminist vote has become detached from a broad set of interests--such as enhanced health care and child care--in which women, as a group, show particular interest. Instead, it has come to be seen as an isolated and controversial single-issue focus on abortion rights that does not translate reliably into votes."
To remedy this, Sanger says, "feminists should be looking at ways to swing the women's vote--both in midterm elections and in 2008--by claiming the rubric of successful family life. They should represent parents' desires to have children when it is best to have them, to raise their children safely to adulthood, to get them to adulthood in good health and educated for the jobs of tomorrow....Feminists should talk about abortion, as well as birth control, in terms of family formation, not just as a right or a matter of individual autonomy.
Sanger is right that the feminist appeal to women voters has to be made on a broader platform than just abortion rights. But I don't think his approach goes nearly far enough. What would it take to get me really excited about voting for a national political candidate?
Well, for starters, I'd like to see more women candidates. And I'd like to see women candidates who didn't all look like they're cut from the same WASP-y cookie cutter mold. She was only the candidate's wife, but I loved seeing Judith Steinberg on the campaign trail. Someone who wore running shoes in public! Who didn't have dyed, processed, permed hair! Who obviously wasn't fond of make-up! Who was a hard-working doctor with her own professional, personal, and political agenda! Who wasn't willing to kow-tow to the expectations of the press!
We might actually get more women candidates like Judy Steinberg if our political culture weren't so totally driven by TV. A woman can't appear on network TV news unless she's tall, thin, and has "regular" American features, or beautifully "exotic" Asian, Black or Latina features. And unfortunately, the same is true for politicians, who, after all, also have to pass the TV test.
Male pols get away with far more deviance from the Barbie & Ken TV norm, though. John Kerry's craggy face and wild hair was "interesting"--and at least he was tall and thin. His running mate, John Edwards, was actually chided for being too pretty! A woman candidate could never be too pretty.
But I digress. Back to Sanger's contention that if feminists want to attract women to the voting booths next November, and in 2008, we need to start talking up families as our issue, broadly conceived.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something here. But how exactly is this a progressive idea? Why should families be the special provenance of women in the 21st century? Why shouldn't the health and welfare of the American family be just as much a men's issue as a women's issue? And why shouldn't job creation, social benefits, and foreign policy be just as much women's issues as men's issues?
I am frankly disappointed to find Alex Sanger calling for feminists to rally around the American family as if that were an end in itself. His grandmother fought for women's reproductive rights as a means to a much more ambitious end: if women could be freed from the danger and drudgery of conceiving, delivering, and raising children for the whole extent of their child-bearing years, Margaret Sanger knew, they would be able to fully develop as human beings, able to productively contribute to all areas of society.
Margaret Sanger's battle has been largely won today in the United States. To be sure, there's still work to be done to make sure that sexual education, contraception and abortion are available to each and every American woman. But the fundamental right of women to control their own bodies has been legally established and I don't believe that even the new Supreme Court conservatives will dare to try to take that right away.
But the deeper issues challenging the vexed American family today have yet to be tackled in a serious, concerted way by the feminist community. And these issues should be the provenance not just of women, but of men too. Men as well as women need to focus on "the rubric of the successful family life," and debate what this would mean for both sexes. By the same token, women as well as men need to concern ourselves with the bigger picture beyond the confines of the family: the economy, the environmental crisis, trade imbalances, militarism.
The point being that Alex Sanger's appeal to women voters simply on the basis of our concern for our families is far too parochial to be a successful rallying cry for the 21st century feminist movement. Putting women back in the family box is not going to work, at least not as long as the capitalist system insists on sending both parents out into the workforce in order to provide the basics for their children.
If we want to reach out and motivate women to vote, we need to: a) put up more smart, individualistic, deeply ethical women candidates, candidates strong enough to resist the tremendous pressure to conform to the culture of celebrity and corruption that currently rules Washington; and b) appeal to women as smart, worldly, ambitious human beings who want success for themselves and their families on all fronts--personal, professional, familial.
Is that too much to ask?
