Widening the 'Gender Gap'

...Since the first convention of the Caucus in 1973, the number of women in Congress has increased from 16 to only 24 Should women win gubernatorial races this year in Mississippi and Kentucky, that will merely restore them to the level they had in '79-two out of 50 During the last decade, the percentage of women in office has risen from 1 5 per cent to 8 7 per cent for mayors of cities over 30,000 barely enough for San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein to start a women's caucus at this summer's meeting of the U S Conference of Mayors Women have risen from 5 6 to 13 3 per cent in state legislatures, and hold about 15 per cent of township and local council posts...

...During the post-Kennedy decline in election participation, the number of women who cast their ballots dwindled less precipitously than the number of men By 1980, women turned out in virtually the same proportions as men for the first time since they were granted suffrage Accounting for 53 percent of the eligible population, they cast 4-6 million more votes than men in '80 and '82 The women's movement aims to strengthen itself by heightening that preponderance...

...In June, now launched anti-Reagan "truth squads" in an effort to politicize those private concerns Judy Goldsmith, a professorial pragmatist who last year defeated charismatic ex-Mormon Soma Johnson for the presidency of now, said the squads will tell women how White House actions conflict with women's values Yet most Washington-based feminist organizations consider this sort of battle redundant, for whether or not most women disagree with Reagan or call themselves feminists, they vote as if they do...

...When Reagan came to Washington women started out lobbying independently, or in their customary array of one-issue coalitions, against such specific developments as the recession's re-feminization of poverty and remasculinization of the Armed Services, retrenchments in civil rights enforcement, anti-abortion initiatives, domestic budget cuts, and foot-dragging on nuclear arms control Thus their legislative victories in the 97th Congress were limited and concrete, tailored to the thrifty mood in both parties on the Hill They helped liberals block weaker affirmative action guidelines, restore the minimum Social Security benefits for current (though not future) recipients, and guarantee stronger pension rights for present (though not past) spouses of military personnel They cooperated with conservatives in winning passage of a cut in the marriage tax penalty, a boost in the child-care tax credit and the elimination of the widow's tax...

...Between January and June the women diplomatically ignored that figure so they could concentrate on a legislative agenda devised by the House Caucus on Women's Issues and Republican Senators led by Robert Packwood of Oregon Senate Republicans are pushing hard to distinguish themselves from the President, and Speaker Tip O'Neill is bringing House Democrats to heel with the ardor of a born-again feminist As a result of this backing, the women expect to achieve all three of their legislative objectives-resubmission of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the states, a halt to domestic aid shrinkage and passage of the Economic Equity Act (The last is an omnibus package of separable nonspending bills reforming inconsistencies in insurance, pensions, taxes, childsupport, and dependent care Virtually all the groups except now have agreed to water down one proposal, unisex insurance rates, to overcome fierce and well-financed resistance by the insurance industry ). By June, a strategy for a fourth goal-voter registration and mobilization drives coordinated by the Women's Roundtable-had crystallized The League of Women Voters sponsored two days of meetings where pencils flashed as notes were taken by representatives of 39 Roundtable groups-ranging from Alpha Kappa Alpha, a black sorority, and the American Nurses Association to the National Association of Social Workers, the Women's Equity Action League, and the YWCA of the USA They do not have the $2 million budget that fuels that National Hispanic Voter Registration Project, nor have they attracted the TV and newspaper coverage that is being given to the registration efforts among Southern blacks by the flamboyant campaign of Jesse Jackson It should be kept in mind, however, that those drives will enroll women, too...

...Like Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 received half the women's vote while gaining only 37 per cent of those cast by men, the prime beneficiaries of increased balloting by women in November 198 2 were male Democrats A White House study of network exit polls indicated in 73 out of 85 randomly selected 1982 House races, women gave more support to the Democratic candidate Men picked up 25 of the 26 seats Democrats gained in the House...

...Washington-USA WIDENING THE 'GENDER GAP' BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington This summer feminists have been gearing up to gain full advantage from the "gender gap"-the difference between women's and men's voting patterns The term was coined and sold to the media by the National Organization for Women (now) because the shorter, more accurate locution, "sex gap," was deemed too provocatively risible The distinctive tendencies of the two groups at the polls have been the object of much public attention since coming to prominence in the 1980 elections At present feminists are eager to close the "gender lag" of the '70s, the traditionally poorer turnout among women, in the hope of electing larger numbers of women to office Indeed, this prospect is what tantalizes most feminist organizations in the capital these days, and thanks to the growing willingness of women to vote their preferences the goal is not unrealistic...

...American women have long privately held attitudes that contrast with men's Since 1952, the sharpest divergence "has been over issues pertaining to peace or war," says Marjorie Lansing, whose farsighted work, Women and Politics The Invisible Majority, is being reissued this year in a revised edition with a new subtitle-The Visible Majority According to Lansing, women at times have been more inclined than men to favor racial justice and Federal expenditures for so-called humanitarian programs Nonviolence-gun control, nuclear safety and opposition to capital punishment-has wider appeal for women, too, and they are less likely to urge the relaxation of environmental regulations...

...By October, Joyce Miller of the AFL-CIO Coalition of Labor Union Women had inveigled dozens of groups into moving beyond single-issue lobbying toward direct participation in the '82 elections They formed the Women's Roundtable to monitor and encourage the gender gap Their precedent-setting advertising campaign was centered on the slogan, "It's a man's world unless women vote...

...Andrew Mollison, a frequent New Leader contributor, is chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...

...Ritualistic attacks on Reagan and the grilling of five Democratic Presidential hopefuls captured the media spotlight in San Antonio But the real issue was the gender gap Conservative columnist R Emmett Tyrell Jr, writing on the Op Ed page of the Washington Post July 19, insisted that women's organizations are simply "special interest groups that hide their fundamental liberalism beneath a toney label " Yet this ignores the willingness of these women to work effectively with conservatives in areas where their interests overlap-in the tax deals of 1982, for instance Besides, calling 53 per cent of all Americans a special interest group may be missing the barge Unencumbered by a President perceived as being on the wrong side of the gender gap, Republicans will find most feminists welcoming them aboard sooner or later...

...The Roundtable's members have honed their technical skills, obtained foundation funding for a coordinating office and come up with a set of tactics that includes registration in such places as factories and welfare offices, rather than in shopping malls, and paying bounties to those who sign up voters in low income areas That helps compensate for the virtual disappearance from American politics of unpaid women volunteers...

...At a typical grass roots follow-up session in Columbus, Ohio, this month, the Business and Professional Women ran a registration workshop for 100 workers from Ohio affiliates of several Roundtable groups Their selected targets-poor, black, Hispanic, single, and young women-not only have the lowest participation rates, but they are more prone than other women to vote Democratic Asked to reconcile its involvement in this activity with the nonpartisan history of the League of Women Voters, League President Dorothy Ridings shrugged "It's not new for us to have our motives questioned ". There was a prophetic scene at the biennial convention in early July of the National Women's Political Caucus, a bipartisan group A garbage barge piloted by a woman, followed by another barge carrying a happy melange of Anglo, Hispanic and black tourist families putt-putted down the San Antonio River, passing through the amphitheater that straddles it Exhilarated by this timely reminder of the potential Democratic constituency, the speaker, elder stateswoman Bella Abzug, swept off her hat and saluted the floatersby with a deep bow...

...Nevertheless, male Democratic officeholders might not find the gender gap a permanent blessing Feminists are exhibiting a quickening impatience with the fact that women decide more elections than they win At the convention, for example, with its "Win with Women" motto, campaign professionals of all ideological stripes worked the Caucus receptions searching for clients By my count, 24 of the 60 workshops concerned how to elect women...