McCain and Palin Want Women's Votes But Do Women Want Them?

Women's Voices, Women Vote (WVWV) are encouraging the unmarried women of America to unify around a set of core issues and vote. Through its "Unmarried Women's Agenda" that includes equal pay, expanded health care coverage and investments in public education, WVWV is hoping to reach this particular voting bloc this election season. But why?

According to WVWV, unmarried women "have the potential to elect the next President."

In an email, WVWV writes that "While married women favored McCain over Barack Obama by 49 to 42 percent, unmarried women supported Obama over McCain by 60 to 30 percent...Numbering 53 million, these single, separated, divorced and widowed women represent 26 percent of the voting age population." Add to this that for the first time in history, almost as many adult American women are unmarried as married, and we can see why Sarah Palin may have been a political choice for the GOP. But was it the right one?

The GOP leadership and social conservative movement have thrust Sarah Palin, Republican Vice Presidential candidate, front and center into the spotlight. But, of course, this election -- as any election -- should not be about the candidates as much as it is about us -- Americans on the receiving end of these candidates' policy stances. With that in mind, there are a host of critical reproductive and sexual health and rights and family policies in play about which Americans deserve to know where each set of candidates stand; issues like access to health care, teen pregnancy prevention programs, federal funding of contraception, comprehensive sexuality education, equal pay for women, child care subsidies, ensuring access to pre-K for all and more.

But instead of clear policy stances on these issues at the GOP convention or in the surrounding media attention what we have been privy to are endless distractions about Sarah Palin's family, the personal matters and private choices Ms. Palin and her family have made over the last few months and a religious right bloc that has firmly cemented their support for said choices -- support that falls in direct conflict with the rhetoric, agenda and policies they promote for the rest of American families.

Progressive bloggers and a handful of journalists have attempted to link Palin's familial issues to concrete policy questions specifically related to women's health and family support services including those issues above that "did not make the cut" at the Republican National Convention.

The McCain campaign has been vocal about Sarah Palin as a woman who "understands what women go through, the struggles they have, the issues they face every day." Positioning Palin as a hockey-mom/mother of a special needs child, the campaign believes they can win over undecided female voters with this message. But it seems that women are not buying it.

According to a recent poll, six in ten female voters in the U.S. see McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for Vice Presidential running mate as driven by politics "rather than any sense of conviction on John McCain's part that she has the experience and qualities to make a good vice-president." In addition, 56% of the women polled said they were "put off" by Palin's legislative record as well as her stances on a range of moral issues. 

Women -- undecided or independent, married or unmarried -- don't want to just be able to relate to a Vice President as if she's their college roommate or friend next door. They want to know what a President and Vice President will actually do to help them with the "struggles they have" and "the issues they face every day." What kinds of issues?

The Economics of Womanhood

Women are still paid less per dollar than their male counterparts for work of equal value. This varies dramatically, of course, depending on what the color of your skin is, and what your ethnic background is. Women makes 77 cents for every one dollar a man in a comparable position brings in -- and the amount decreases for African-American women and Latina women. With recent reports of a skyrocketing unemployment rate, and the fact that the majority of those in poverty are women and children, it is relevant, in fact critical, that American families know how a McCain/Palin administration would prioritize this issue. The Lily Ledbetter Act was strongly supported by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both. Yet John McCain voted against it. And while Sarah Palin has undoubtedly (and respectfully) become the success she is through hard work, we have yet to hear from her why the campaign she's joined votes against ensuring equal pay for women. John McCain and Sarah Palin want women to "relate" to Palin and yet when it comes time to showing women that Palin is "just like us", their policy stances fail them.  A McCain/Palin ticket does not support policies that would allow other women -- younger or older, married mothers, married women, single women -- to be paid a fair wage. John McCain proudly stands next to his female running mate leveraging her gender as a political tool but where is his pride in ensuring economic equity for all other American women?