PWCF Featured in ElectWomen Magazine

Pennsylvania Women Get Boost from Women’s Campaign Fund

Country’s Longest Running Women’s PAC Means Business

By Kathy Groob, Publisher ElectWomen Magazine

Twenty-seven years ago the political landscape for women was abuzz with hot button issues. The women who founded the Pennsylvania Women’s Campaign Fund (PWCF) were determined to raise money for women candidates of all political parties who would carry out their principles of equality embodied in the ERA, were pro-choice, and progressive on other social issues.

The organization celebrated their 25^th anniversary two years ago and is dedicated to continuing their tradition of being involved in every campaign cycle since 1982.   “We still do not have enough women in the pipeline in Pennsylvania and not many win, “ said Martha Harris, one of the founding mothers of PWCF.  “It’s still a real challenge to grow the percentage of women in office and we’ve made only modest gains.  We started at 4% in 1982 and now are at about 15% of women serving in the state legislature.  We still have a long way to go.”

The organization is non-partisan and supports women from both sides of the political aisle.  “Electing more progressive women to decision making positions should not be a partisan issue,” said Martha Harris.  Democratic women are often seen as more progressive, but in fact, the first PWCF endorsed candidate was a Republican woman in 1982.

The partisan issue is not without controversy. Nancy Neuman, Former PWCF President writes this “Republican Alma Jacobs, a founding board member, learned that first hand when nine Republican women in the House accused her of disloyalty. According to the Delaware Times of March 19, 1982, Jacobs was the “center of a growing storm…because she is on the board of the new PWCF [which] has endorsed two Democrats and a challenger to Republican incumbent Representative Steven Friend.”

In recent years, the organization has focused on training women to run for office.  Earlier this year they sponsored The Winning Edge Campaign School for women at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.  The same program will be held in Philadelphia in September.  “Training at the local level is important to get the awareness and motivation going and to give women the tools at the local level,” said President-elect, Jennifer Reiner.  “We plan to expand beyond our Pittsburgh base and provide training in both Philadelphia and Harrisburg.”

“We are stepping up trainings by getting out into different regions and enhancing the three-day training and fundraising,” said President Beth Zamponga. “We have to identify and ask women to run – step up the recruitment efforts.  We need to get more women in the field running.”

“Our key word is proactive – we are being strategic with our efforts and we know the state house is up for grabs,” said Beth Zamponga.  “PCFW is really trying to raise as much money as we can during this off year, and about building critical mass – that’s what it’s really all about.”

To contribute or for more information about the Pennsylvania Women’s Campaign Fund, visit: http://pawcf.org/.

Tags: campaigns, elect women, elections, Pennsylvania Women’s Campaign Fund, women in politics

Philly.com asks, “Why so few women in politics?”

Why so few women in politics?

By CATHERINE LUCEY
Philadelphia Daily News

luceyc@phillynews.com 215-854-4172

WHEN LYNNE Abraham became district attorney in 1991, her ascent to one of the city’s highest offices was hailed as a breakthrough for women in local politics – often viewed as an exclusive old-boys network.

But almost 20 years later, the “No Girls Allowed” sign still seems firmly in place in both the city and state.

Consider this: Philadelphia has had just one viable woman mayoral candidate, and she didn’t survive the primary. Pennsylvania is ranked 46th for the percentage of women in the state Legislature – only Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina are worse. The state has never had a woman governor or a woman U.S. senator.

And, two weeks ago, six men ran in primary elections to replace Abraham.

“It’s a tough business,” Abraham said, when asked about the challenges facing women running for office. “This is not a tea party.”

Although women make up 53 percent of the city’s population, women often take a back seat in the world of local politics.

Reasons cited by experts for the dearth of women in elected office include the city and state’s entrenched political machinery, which often favors male candidates and protects male incumbents; limited efforts to actively recruit women candidates, and that there are few high-ranking female elected officials to help advance others.

“We have a longer tradition of men being the politicians. It’s been harder for women to break through,” said U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, the state’s highest-ranking woman elected official, representing Northeast Philadelphia and parts of Montgomery County. “Men have dominated in political circles in Pennsylvania politics for so long, and people stay in their elected positions for so long.”

There is some estrogen in the local political lineup in addition to Schwartz. Seven of Philly’s 17 City Council members are women. And this year, for the first time, two of the state’s U.S. representatives are women.

But local participation still pales in comparison to that in other cities and states. Atlanta and Baltimore have women mayors. Michigan, Alaska and Connecticut are among the states with female governors. More than 35 percent of the state legislators in Colorado, Vermont and New Hampshire are female.

Allyson Lowe, director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy at Chatham University, in Pittsburgh, said that Pennsylvania’s political makeup most closely mirrors a conservative Southern state.

“The way the old-boys network works, they cultivate people who are like themselves,” Lowe said.

Lowe also noted that women are more likely to run if recruited – but that with mostly men in power, that’s not always going to happen.

“Men tend to run for office when they see an opportunity,” Lowe said. “Women tend to wait to be asked. Who would do the asking? Mostly men in office.”

And, because the power structure is largely male, it can be difficult for women to advance once they achieve office.

Lisa Bennington, a divorce lawyer from Pittsburgh, stayed in the state House of Representatives only one term after her 2006 election. She said that she felt isolated and irrelevant in the largely male legislative body, where few women have leadership positions.

“When you’re outnumbered 90-10, and the Democrats aren’t exactly filled with progressive thinkers, how do you advance women within that hierarchy?” asked Bennington, 33, who works at the Pittsburgh law firm Pollock Begg Komar Glasser LLC.

Another problem is that many women choose not to run for office when they have young children, waiting until later in life. That often means men get earlier starts in politics and achieve higher offices.

“The average woman in the legislature started later, and it is a problem with seniority,” said state Rep. Babette Josephs, whose district takes in parts of Center City and Grays Ferry. Josephs is the most senior woman in the Legislature with 25 years in the state House of Representatives.

Still, increasing the number of women in elected office does make a difference in the kind of issues addressed and services provided by government, Lowe said.

“When you increase the number of women in government, you broaden the range of issues and the range of solutions,” Lowe said. “When you bring more people to the table you have more perspective.”

There are efforts underway to change the status quo. Schwartz and Josephs said that they try to mentor women getting into politics. So does state Rep. Cherelle Parker, who represents parts of Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. Parker said that she regularly brings high-school students into her office to show them how governing works.

“For me, I’ve had the benefit of great mentorship,” Parker said. “We need to do more of that with women, young women, get them involved early on.”

Some thought an even more organized pro-woman effort might help. Happy Fernandez, a former city councilwoman who ran in the Democratic mayoral primary in 1999, said that she’d love to see a local version of Emily’s List – a national group dedicated to raising money for the campaigns of pro-choice Democratic women.

“I think what would be great, if there was someone in the city . . . who wanted to make it her business to build a political network that would be the base for a number of women,” said Fernandez, president of Moore College of Art and Design.

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, local Democratic Party chairman, said that he’s not holding women back.

“I think they’re delightful in office,” Brady said of female elected officials. “They’re great legislators. I never did, never will discourage them.”

Lowe noted that there are more resources available to women candidates today than 20 years ago – like candidate-training programs and fundraising support. And she stressed that when women do run, they can be just as successful at winning office as men.

“When women run, women can win,” Lowe said.

“Women do not have a higher loss rate than men.”

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20090602_Why_few_women_in_politics_.html

Young Philly Politics gives a shout out to PWCF

Women in Politics

Submitted by Ray Murphy on Tue, 05/19/2009 – 4:16pm.

http://www.youngphillypolitics.com/women_politics

It’s not quite time for the post-mortem, but it is so dead out here in election land that I thought I would point your attention to a post on PhillyClout about Lynne Abraham where she talks about women in Philadelphia politics:

Women really have to be tough, Abraham said. This is not a tea party.

Now you may not know this about me, but I don’t like Lynne Abraham. Not personally of course. I don’t know her. But I don’t like her as our DA.

However, one thing I do admire is that she has won many city-wide races as a woman. Now I have heard all kinds of explanations as to why this is the case–often from folks who have a grudge against her–but no matter how you slice it, aside from a handful of city councilwomen at-large in maybe the last 20 years, she’s held on to her post for a long time in a city and state that has a truly pitiful record of electing women. That is worth noting.

And the fact that is has happened so little is really a problem for “progressives.” And even though I am glad to see her go, when Abraham leaves she will be replaced by a man which means a loss for local women in electoral power.

As such, I refer you to my golden oldie post asking which woman will run for Mayor in 2015. Let’s not let that die:

http://youngphillypolitics.com/electing_woman_mayor_2015.

I would love to see us organize around a woman early on for Mayor in that race. It’d be a real coup to elect a woman Mayor and it is the kind of thing we could all get behind. And statewide races are tough in PA, but are we ever going to find a progressive woman who can run statewide and win? If not, maybe we all need to do more to help support emerging leaders.

(Which makes this a good time to acknowledge some interesting activity from the PA Women’s Campaign Fund lately, not to mention the steady work of groups like Philly NOW and CLUW, and to toot my own group’s horn, Liberty City which has a gender parity requirement for its board: Something other groups might want to consider as a practical way to create new women leaders.)

And of course some of that change could start right here as this is a blog too often dominated by male-ego driven…stuff.

So, women, please write.

What if women ran the world?

Male hubris has made a mess. We need more female qualities. By Mark Lange from the March 26, 2009 edition San Francisco – It is getting harder to escape the sense that most of the trouble in the world – whether it’s coming out of the Senate, a mortgage lender, or a tank turret – can be traced to one overriding problem: too many men steering. Had our economic, domestic, and foreign policy been more informed by women, we might be enjoying a safer ride. Doubt it? Here’s a test. Would any of the women you admire have set up a healthcare system as byzantine, costly, and underperforming as America’s? Or a financial system where mortgage lenders don’t have to care about being paid back? Or a bailout that spends $1 trillion in public money to subsidize the purchase of junk debt from the same geniuses that generated it? It may be time for guys to hand over the keys, ask for directions, and sit (quietly, please) in the back seat for a while. Forget gender politics; just look at results. Our computer-based fantasy financial instruments have erased perhaps 45 percent of the world’s wealth. We’ve waged two wars at the same time for six years at a fully loaded cost in the trillions. And we’ve managed the simultaneous implosion of what amounts to most of the male industrial complex, from banks to newspapers to automakers. Women’s effectiveness as decisionmakers is well documented, even if it isn’t entirely accepted by either gender. An MIT study of female leaders running village councils in India found that by objective measures (building better wells, taking fewer bribes) women ran their villages better. American women are about to eclipse men in sheer payroll numbers – and they’re now majority owners of nearly half of the private companies in the country. Yet somehow the average working woman still devotes much more time to child care and housework. What’s clear is that, on average, men overestimate their IQ while women underestimate theirs. And that may be a clue, in terms of effectiveness: While decisiveness and risk-taking matter, hubris (too often male) creates problems. Humility and collaboration (more often female) solve them. What explains the difference? It could simply be a matter of emotional need, reinforced by generations of gender stereotyping. Seeking competition and challenge, guys do tend to cast things in shades of conflict: defaulting to a win/lose, right (“my”) position versus wrong (“yours”). On this point, scientists, who are mostly men, disagree. But there’s no doubt that social stability is compromised by masculine habits such as hostile takeovers, and paying enormous retention bonuses to men who’ve driven a business into the ground and have already left. The difference could be evolutionary. Primordial hunters (men) had to make rapid decisions and act on them, right or wrong, but quickly. Chase that bunny! Club that rival! Run away! Gatherers (women), meanwhile, needed an awareness of the larger context – knowing which berry bushes would ripen when, how to keep the kids from clonking each other with rocks, and generally holding the tribe together and getting things done. Or, in a world where our reverence for stature remains primitive, it’s possible women just have to be more creative, collaborative, and clever when they average five inches shorter and 27 pounds lighter than men. But it’s also possible that even men are ready to learn that women make better leaders than they know. A Pew Research survey last year showed that the public rates women equal or superior to men in seven of the eight qualities they value most highly in leadership. The results were striking on the questions of honesty and intelligence, which registered as the two most important characteristics of leadership, and which lately have been in relatively short supply. On these dimensions, women were more than twice as likely to be rated superior to men – by both women and men. Male cognitive patterns of linear, command-and-control thinking are no longer optimal – either with Gen-Y talent in the workplace, or with geopolitical conflict around the world. We’re heading into an era when we need leadership that enlists self-interest in support of the larger outcome – less transactional and more transformational. Rather than punishing failure or reinforcing conflict, motivating progress. Many question America’s standing and role in the world. Whatever we might do to mitigate climate change will be completely swamped unless we can positively engage India and China. Complex and interconnected questions of nuclear prolifer-ation, resource scarcity, and interconnected human demands will put an unprecedented premium on collaboration and cooperation. As women ascend as leaders in policy and business, the decisions they make will be more accountable to a wider array of interests, stakeholders, and outcomes. By example, they will teach us to lead less through positional authority and more through positive influence- with more of a bias toward informed action and a clearer connection between everything we know, and all we have to do. • Mark Lange is a consultant and former presidential speechwriter.

In Politics, What Works For A Man Still Does Not Work For A Woman

In Politics, What Works For A Man Still Does Not Work For A Woman
Posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 9:24am by Madeleine Kunin

I was a guest lecturer yesterday at an introductory class on Women’s Studies on Women and Politics at the University of Vermont. After telling the students about my journey into politics and hoping to encourage them to think about running for office themselves one day, I asked how many of them had thought that they would get involved in politics. This was a seminar of about 18 students, all women, except for two men. One woman raised her hand and said, “I think I’d like to work behind the scenes. I wouldn’t want to be the candidate. I tend to be sarcastic and I’m afraid people would think I was catty.”

Hmmm? First, the professor and I both jumped on the word “catty.” Why would she use this term that evokes such a strong gender stereotype? I pointed that out, but I also encouraged her. “It’s great to work behind the scenes, and if you get involved in a campaign, you’ll learn a lot and you might want to run yourself some day.”

She did not buy into that. Then, the professor pointed out the writing on the t-shirt one of the men in the class was wearing. I hadn’t bothered to try to decipher it from across the table.

It said, in bright yellow scraggly letters on a black background, “SARCASTIC, that’s my strong point.”

Wow!

There it was. The point I had been trying to make, that there are still gender differences in how women and men approach political leadership was right in front of my eyes. (This was the same male student who asked the first question.)

She was afraid of being considered sarcastic and he flaunted it as an interesting or funny attention-getter. What works for a man, still does not work for a woman–both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.

I also noticed that women in the class were less inclined to speak up.

Another woman explained that it was so difficult for her to form her own opinions because there was so much information, and so many divided opinions. Her father thought one thing, her friends another, and she was caught in-between. I assured her that she was still in a formative stage, and college was a good time to explore and experiment with different beliefs. She still had time to form her opinions. I noted that perhaps people were more polarized today in their opinions than they were in my college days because the Internet and the traditional media go to extremes. There are not many moderates or consensus builders around, as we see by the behavior of the U.S. Congress.

Now, back to her discomfort with having to express opinions if she were to become political: I suspect very few men would confess to not having opinions, or better yet, would not be worried about their lack of strong opinions.

Many women do not want to venture out into the “opinion world” until they are certain of themselves, the facts, and that they are right. They are afraid of being shot down. The result is often silence.

To be political means to speak out, to risk being called “catty”, or worse. I don’t hear men worrying about whether they may be right or not. They enjoy the fight, whether it is with words or fists. Women still tend to shy away from controversy, to be uncomfortable with competition. Perhaps that is why only 17 percent of the members of Congress are female, and men are still largely running the country.

This was originally posted at Chelsea Green.

Madeleine M. Kunin is the former Governor of Vermont and was the state’s first woman governor. She served as Ambassador to Switzerland for President Clinton, and was on the three-person panel that chose Al Gore to be Clinton’s VP. She is the author of Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead from Chelsea Green Publishing.

Female Candidates Enter 2009 Campaign Queue

Female Candidates Enter 2009 Campaign Queue

Run Date: 03/25/09
By Allison Stevens
Washington Bureau Chief

Female hopefuls are already throwing their hats into the ring for elections in 2009 and 2010, vying for vacated seats and challenging incumbents. Political observers say the interest from women could help boost their numbers in Congress.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WOMENSENEWS)–Fresh off the 2008 campaign trail, female politicians are setting their sights on their next set of opportunities to inch closer to gender equality in government.

In Illinois, Republican Rosanna Pulido will represent her party in an April 7 contest to replace Rahm Emmanuel, who left his seat to serve as President Obama’s chief of staff. It is an uphill fight for Pulido, a conservative Republican running in a Democratic stronghold in Chicago.

And in California, two women–Democrat Judy Chu and Republican Teresa Hernandez–are vying for the right to replace former Rep. Hilda Solis, now secretary of labor in the Obama administration. The primary will be held on May 19 and the special election will be held on July 14.

Meanwhile, prominent women are already being eyed as top candidates in 2010.

EMILY’s List, a leading political action committee in Washington, D.C., that backs pro-choice Democratic women, has already endorsed Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan in her bid for the state’s open Senate seat. Carnahan’s father, Mel, won the seat posthumously in 2000, and her mother, Jean, was subsequently appointed to serve out his term. She lost a bid for a full term in 2002 to former Sen. Jim Talent, who lost in 2008 to Claire McCaskill. If she wins, Missouri would become the fourth state with two female senators.

“Robin Carnahan has a lengthy and impressive record of public service, and has experience running for–and winning–statewide office,” EMILY’s List president Ellen Malcolm said in a statement.

In California, former eBay chief Meg Whitman–a pro-choice Republican–has declared her candidacy for the state’s gubernatorial office.

And if Congress enacts legislation enfranchising residents of the District of Columbia, their long-standing non-voting representative–Eleanor Holmes Norton–would be considered a favorite for the seat in forthcoming elections. But that’s still an uncertain prospect.

Thin Ranks
Women currently hold 73 seats in the House, or 17 percent of the chamber, and 17 seats in the Senate, or 17 percent of that body. Those numbers are up slightly from 2006, when women held 16 seats in the Senate and 72 seats in the House, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, a research organization at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick.

Women have already seen some slippage as female lawmakers have left the legislative body to join the Obama administration. Losses include Solis and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was replaced by former Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from upstate New York. Two men were nominated to run for her now-vacant House seat in a special election to be held on March 31.

In Kansas, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius–named to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services–will be replaced by Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson. Former Arizona Gov. Democrat Janet Napolitano, now head of the Department of Homeland Security, was succeeded by a woman, Jan Brewer, a Republican who was Arizona’s secretary of state.

Political observers are also predicting possible retirements in 2010 from key congressional women such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a three-term Texas Republican. She is eyeing a bid for governor.

In the House, Oklahoma Republican Mary Fallin, the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, a bipartisan group of female lawmakers in the House, is also said to be considering a gubernatorial run. Her co-chair, Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, is reported to be mulling a bid for the Senate seat held by Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Barack Obama after the election. And Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz may run for her state’s Senate seat.

Meanwhile, two New York Democratic women–Reps. Carolyn McCarthy and Carolyn Maloney–are weighing primary challenges to Gillibrand in 2010.

Offsetting Earlier Gains
Those potential departures could offset some of the gains women have made in recent years.

In every election since 1992, women have made single-digit gains, peaking in 2004 when they picked up eight seats.

In 1992, a year known as the “Year of the Women,” women nearly doubled their ranks. They picked up 19 House seats and three Senate seats to amass 47 seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate. Victories were spurred in part by voter outrage over Senate nomination hearings of sex-harassment charges against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Reaching for 20 Percent
Slow progress and possible retirements in 2010 leaves as a far-off goal the 20-percent benchmark that political scientist Sue Thomas identified more than a decade ago as the number needed for a political minority to influence the majority.

In a study of 12 state legislatures Thomas found that when women held at least 1 in 5 state legislative seats, they were more likely to sponsor and push forward women-friendly legislation such as funding for domestic violence shelters and stricter child-support laws.

Marie Wilson, head of the White House Project, a nonpartisan organization in New York that works to elect women to all levels of office, sets that “critical mass” bar higher, at 33 percent. That’s closer to women’s percentages in legislatures in Scandinavian nations, which have typically led the world in working toward gender equality.

Worldwide, 18 percent of national legislative seats are held by women, according to the Geneva-based Inter Parliamentary Union. It ranks the United States 71st in the world for female representation in government.

Twenty-three nations have at least 30 percent women in their lower houses in national assemblies. Rwanda leads the world with 56 percent of seats in the lower house and 35 percent in the upper house.

Sweden is next, with women holding 47 percent of seats in its single-chamber parliament. Cuba is third with 43 percent.

Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief for Women’s eNews.

Women’s eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

Gender Gap in Politics Is Invite for More to Run

Gender Gap in Politics Is Invite for More to Run

By Celinda Lake – WeNews correspondent

Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women’s Enews.

(WOMENSENEWS)– As I reflect on Women’s History Month and the gains we have made in the political world, I see a future with plenty of room to improve.

Yes, more women hold elected office; yes, there is still work to be done.

While over two-thirds of adults think that, in general, women and men make equally good political leaders, women are only 17 percent of U.S. Congress. Of the 50 states, female governors lead only eight.

Voters point to many reasons for the lag in female officeholders, including a lack of receptiveness to such women as well as a sense of different standards for male and female candidates.

Last year’s campaign by Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and Sarah Palin for the vice presidency on the GOP ticket may move the needle on that. Those candidates showed women can make serious bids. They are expected to mightily inspire other women to run for office.

Yet the low numbers of women in office and some polling data still speak to the challenge that remains.

Is America Ready?

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans think the country is not ready to elect a woman as president (51 percent say this is a major reason), while more than 4-in-10 say women in politics are held back by men.

A sizable proportion of Americans–roughly 4-in-10–also see discrimination against women as a major factor in the scarcity of high-ranking female lawmakers.

While men and women agree that these are the inhibitors to female leadership, women hold this view more intensely.

On the idea that the country is not ready to elect a woman, 56 percent of women call this a major factor versus 46 percent of men. On the idea that women are held back by men there is again a perception gender gap, with 48 percent of women holding this view compared with 37 percent of men. When it comes to discrimination against women you find 45 percent of women seeing it that way compared to 30 percent of men.

A Lifetime Television survey conducted after the November 2008 elections asked women about the requirements for male and female candidates. An overwhelming 65 percent said that men and women are held to different standards. When running for elective office, only 29 percent said requirements were the same.

Women See More Challenges

Women considered it more challenging for female candidates to be taken seriously by media and the voters. Seventy nine percent of women said men had less trouble expressing their seriousness to the electorate and 71 percent said it was less difficult for them to convince the media of their legitimacy.

Despite all this, the public does not think women should stay away from elected office.

In other research, we have found that voters want the best candidate, male or female.

In the Pew study, a strong majority of respondents, 69 percent, rate women and men as equally good political leaders. Only 21 percent prefer men, while 6 percent favor women.

Few attribute the small number of women in elected office to ideas such as women not being as good as men at leadership (16 percent say it’s a major reason) or women not being tough enough for politics (that’s 14 percent).

In the Lifetime survey, when women were asked to select from a list of nine possible reasons why fewer women hold elected office, 20 percent said the perception of lack of experience could be blamed. An equal number said that women are not perceived as tough enough. Eleven percent believed women would prefer to devote their attention to their family and not to politics. The remaining answer choices were in the single digits.

Women Enjoy Some Advantage

In policy areas, female leaders are judged to be better than men at dealing with social issues such as health care and education, while their male counterparts have a lead in dealing with crime, public safety and national security. The economy and fiscal issues are another point of vulnerability for female candidates.

Communicating strength and expertise on these traditionally male areas is critical for women, especially in today’s turbulent economy.

The Pew research also indicated that female politicians have the respect of female voters in key areas. By a 13-point margin (48 percent of women to 35 percent among men), women say that female leaders exhibit the trait of working out compromise. Women are more likely than men to say that female leaders better represent their interests (38 percent among women to 18 percent of men).

If female candidates can connect with the female electorate, that can go a long way to improve their chances.

However, as we saw in both the 2006 and 2008 elections, younger female voters tend to be less supportive of female candidates and gender is less important than agenda and qualifications to them.

Female leaders also have advantages over male elected officials in personal traits, according to the Pew survey.

As a whole, women are seen as more compassionate (80 percent say more true of women than men), creative (62 percent), outgoing (47 percent), intelligent (38 percent), and honest (50 percent). On some scores women and men come up equal: just as ambitious (34 percent each) and hardworking (28 percent each).

One area of vulnerability is the perception that women aren’t decisive. In this same Pew study, respondents gave male candidates a doubled-digit advantage over women on this key trait.

The lesson here is that while female candidates may have an edge in the compassion and honesty traits, they need to make a concerted effort to prove their ability to lead and make decisions to overcome this bias.

Of course specific contests where women are on the ballot are unique and each one presents its own challenges.

Women need to test the mood of their potential constituency, tailor their messages to their districts or states, and find ways to prove that they are indeed the best candidates regardless of gender.

If they do this successfully, they will certainly give us all more to celebrate next March.

Celinda Lake is a pollster and political strategist for Democrats and progressives. She is president of Lake Research Partners, with expertise in electing female candidates and framing issues to female voters. American Politics calls Lake a “super-strategist or, better yet, the Godmother,” and Working Woman says she is “arguably the most influential woman in her field.”

Women’s eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org . -

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