What women want from the election
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
The U.S. presidential campaign is settling into the usual
October horse race, with President George W. Bush and
Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in a statistical dead
heat, according to an Oct. 8 Reuters/Zogby poll.
And what's the "swing" group both Bush and Kerry hope to
capture and ride to victory? Women.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press, says that women "will be the story of
this election: the way women make this choice." (New York
Times, Sept. 22)
A Time magazine poll, also issued on Oct. 8, showed Bush
still leading with male voters, getting 51 percent to Kerry's
35 percent. Time said Kerry's rebound, from September doldrums
to the current tie in the polls, came from his increased
"likability" among women.
Both Bush and Kerry are actively courting women in the most
old-fashioned sense of that word, offering style rather than a
plan of action to address the urgent problems of jobs, housing,
health care, child care and education faced by most women in
the United States.
According to Republican pollsters Lance Tarrance and Leslie
Sanchez, Bush's accep tance speech at the Republican National
Convention was doctored to give it "feminine appeal" relative
to the war on Iraq. They noted that the addition of "emotional
connection" and personal anecdotes about Bush holding "the
children of the fallen"were there to reassure women he could
keep them and their children safe.
Of course, this strategy is also based on the sexist
assumption that women want emotion and protection, rather than
fact, action and the resources to take care of themselves. It
reflects Bush's consistently right-wing and reactionary stance
on women's issues.
Kerry's contempt
Reform-oriented women's groups like the National
Organization for Women are pushing Kerry as "the woman's
candidate in 2004" and a real alternative to Bush. But a visit
to Kerry's campaign web site reveals such failure to deal with
the reality of women's lives that it borders on contempt.
What it shows, instead, is that Kerry is really a friend of
big business, as he himself has said.
What's Kerry's answer to closing the pay gap between men and
women that has women earning only 77 cents for every man's
dollar? He'll ask companies to reveal more about their payment
practices.
What's Kerry's suggestion for helping millions of women cope
with the crushing demands of parenting along with work with no
health benefits and less than living wages? Some additional
after-school programs and a modest increase in the child-care
tax credit.
Kerry pays lip service to women's reproductive choice, but
what are his concrete proposals for women's health? They are
limited to more funding for breast cancer research--a good
thing but also a boon for big drug companies--and an update to
the Patient's Bill of Rights about women's access to an
obstetrician/gynecologist under managed-care programs. Nothing
about how the millions of women without health insurance could
afford such a doctor in the first place.
In an attempt to co-opt the opposition of many women to the
brutal U.S. war on Iraq, the Kerry campaign has sent out a
group of eight women who are wives and mothers of U.S. soldiers
to tour as "Moms with a Mission." The mission is to elect Kerry
as commander-in-chief.
Kerry's plan is to continue the war on Iraq and increase the
number of U.S. troops there. He has indicated no intention to
spare the lives of either working-class U.S. soldiers sent
there by the economic draft or of Iraqi children, women and men
now being wounded and dying in ever greater numbers.
The fraud of capitalist democracy
The Bush administration justified the current U.S. wars on
both Afghanistan and Iraq by arguing that U.S. occupation aims
to set up "democracies" under which women's lives would
improve. On Oct. 9 in Afghanistan, all 15 opponents of the
current U.S.-imposed president, Hamid Karzai, denounced the
election held that day as fraudulent and illegitimate.
In the days leading up to the election, the U.S. media made
much of women voting. But the New York Times coverage of
election day revealed, perhaps inadvertently, the deeper
problems of women in Afghanistan. Most at the polls in the
poorest neighborhoods of Kabul were illiterate. Many had such
deeply damaged eyesight that they could not make out the
candidate photographs necessary to cast a ballot. (New York
Times, Oct. 10)
This misery reflects years of devastating war imposed on
Afghanistan by the United States. After a 1978 popular
revolution there that championed women's rights and sent teams
of teachers and medical workers into rural and urban areas, the
CIA spent billions of dollars to overthrow it, constructing an
army of the Taliban and other feudal forces. It was part of the
Cold War against the Soviet Union, and millions of Afghan
people were the victims. (Workers World, Oct. 10, 1996)
Now Washington is waging another war, this time against some
of the same elements it sponsored earlier, but also tied to
U.S. imperialism's determination to control the vast resources
of central Asia, which once belonged to the Soviet peoples.
In Iraq, U.S. sanctions and war have killed women and their
loved ones while destroying their homes. Women under the
occupation have also lost many benefits formerly provided by
their national government--benefits that women in the United
States have never had, such as free education through the
university level, gov ernment-guaranteed jobs for women who
wanted to work outside the home, equal pay for equal work, free
health care, including pre- and post-natal care, six months
paid maternity leave and subsidized child care in most work
places, as well as subsidies for basic food and housing.
("Talking with Friends and Family About Iraq: A Madre Guide,"
madre.org)
Do any of the candidates running in the U.S. elections
commit to ending the "endless war" waged by the U.S. ruling
class? Are any working for a world where all women can blossom
in their full humanity, including lesbian, bisexual and trans
women, women of oppressed nationalities and/or immigrants, and
women who are disabled?
Yes. The Workers World presidential and vice-presidential
candidates, John Parker and Teresa Gutierrez, have a
revolutionary program to address what women want from the
future. Their web site is vote4workers.org.
Reprinted from the Oct. 21, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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