After Obama's Victory: What's Next for Women?

Even as jubilation among Democratic voters was still erupting after Sen. Barack Obama's historic presidential victory, women's groups began looking ahead to what comes next and how to get there.

From fixing the domestic health-care system and the economy, to making child care more accessible to working mothers, to rescinding the so-called global gag rule that cuts off foreign aid to groups that provide abortion or counseling, or even lobby for changes in abortion laws, women's groups started exercising the type of grassroots activism that political analysts say helped bring the Democrats to power on Tuesday.

Obama's sweeping win was hailed by pro-choice political action committee EMILY's List and other organizations as a women's triumph because their votes clinched the victory for Democrats.

In places like New Hampshire, where former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, handily beat Republican incumbent Sen. John Sununu, women made the difference, said analysts from Washington-based EMILY's List in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

New Hampshire also elected three new women to its state Senate. Thirteen of 24 seats are now held by women, making it the first legislative chamber in the nation to have a female majority.

"How did Obama win New Hampshire? He won it with women. Sixty-one percent of women supported Barack Obama, 38 percent McCain," said Maren Hesla, who directed an EMILY's List initiative to get women to the polls. Given that men in the state were divided evenly between Obama and McCain, with 49 percent each, "the complete margin of victory in New Hampshire ... came from women."

Decisive Gender Gap

The gender voting gap contributed to Obama's victory, according to an exit poll analysis from the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Nationally, 56 percent of women voted for Obama and 43 percent for McCain forming a seven-point gender gap.

Among white women, 46 percent voted for Obama, compared to 41 percent of white men, according to the center. Ninety-six percent of African American women voted for Obama, one percentage point higher than black men. Among Hispanic voters the gender gap was four points, with 68 percent of Latinas for Obama and 64 percent of Latino men for Obama.

Unmarried women, however, were trumpeted as a decisive demographic group in Obama's victory by Women's Voices, Women Vote, a nonpartisan Washington group that promotes single women's involvement in elections. According to its analysis, unmarried women with children voted 3-to-1 in favor of Obama. Unmarried women without children voted 69 percent for Obama and 31 percent for McCain.

The new Obama administration, aware of where its votes came from, and a Democrat-controlled Congress will be paying close attention to issues affecting women, EMILY's List president Ellen Malcolm predicted.

"They understand that it was women who really demanded change and they also know that they're going to deliver for those women," said Malcolm, pointing out that female voters who helped sweep women into office in 1992 -- the Year of the Woman, when female candidates made significant gains in Congress -- stayed home dissatisfied in 1994, resulting in electoral losses for the Democrats.

Grabbing the Momentum

Nevertheless, in a Cambridge, Mass., forum sponsored by the Center for New Words, a Cambridge group that works to amplify women's voices through writing and the media, the talk centered just as much on what women can do to keep the impetus going as it did on what an Obama administration can do for women.

Child care, the economy, health care and reproductive rights were cited as major issues to address. About 50 people attended the live forum, while nearly triple that number followed a Webcast by logging in to one of about half a dozen feminist blogs, said organizer Jaclyn Friedman, the center's program director.