Barack Obama’s Women

The campaign for the presidential election is underway in the United States. At the same time, about one-third of the senators who comprise the American Senate are up for election, which has given many politicians ample opportunities to say a whole lot of nonsense. Take, for example, the emergence of gender issues.

The health insurance system created by President Obama will soon force employers to include contraception coverage in the health insurance policies that they offer their employees. I won’t say that it’s rather like requiring dental plans to pay for toothbrushes since the recent debate has centered around another problem: the attack on the freedom of religious institutions (universities and hospitals, for example) by requiring them to finance and facilitate services that they deem immoral. Another contested issue: The Republican candidates oppose abortion or, in any case, its public funding. It’s true that the Catholic fundamentalism represented by Rick Santorum has not helped the Republicans, but this candidate will soon be eliminated from the race by Mitt Romney.

Polls indicate that the majority of female voters are planning — as has been the case for the past two decades — to vote Democrat, whereas the opposite is true among male voters. The exception that proved the rule occurred during the 2010 elections when, under the tea party’s influence, voters gave the Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives and the female vote was divided equally among the two parties. A recent poll revealed that 58 percent of woman voters are planning to vote for Barack Obama in the coming presidential election, compared to only 38 percent who plan to vote for Mitt Romney.

The Democrats have accused the Republican party of declaring a “war on women.” The self-righteous have condemned “the gender gap” in the Republican Party. A Republican spokesperson brilliantly countered the accusation, saying, “talk about the gender gap the Democrats have — they can’t get men to vote for them.”*

The majority of women are rejecting the Republican Party not, it would seem, based on the question of abortion, but rather, because women tend to favor greater regulation and control. This phenomenon is not new. In an economic analysis published in 1999 by the Journal of Political Economy, two economists, John Lott and Lawrence Kenny, demonstrated that the enfranchisement of women in various states has historically led to that state’s electorate shifting toward the left. We should also add that evolutionary psychology explains the drift: Women are more maternal, leading them to desire the imposition of compassion through the force of the state.

Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University has indirectly confirmed it: “Women rightfully feel more economically vulnerable. They’re aligning themselves with the political party they believe is more supportive of maintaining that social safety net.”

There is, of course, no question of challenging women’s right to vote. There is no more talk of challenging this right in Republican Party than there is talk of disenfranchising men in the Democratic Party. But one can still wonder. Fewer than 50 American senators belong to the fairer sex. Why don’t women vote for female candidates? The question answers itself: Outside of unmentionable psychological motivations, women — like men — generally do not vote based upon gender. Why don’t more women run for office? Partly, no doubt, because they are not attracted to the veritable jungle that is the political universe. It remains strange that the great majority of women support augmenting the power of an institution — the state — whose historic performance as far as peace and other maternal values are concerned has not been — the euphemism of the century — exactly spotless.

The political delirium attained new heights last week when, in front of a group of women, President Obama bragged about his life in a world of women: He mentioned his single mother, his grandmother, his wife, his mother-in-law, his two daughters and a female mentor. A sharp tongue would add that there are no women among the gorillas that assure his protection.

Pierre Lemieux is an associate professor at the University of Quebec in Outaouais and the author of “One Crisis Can Hide Another” (Les Belles Lettres, 2010).

*Editor’s Note: Ann Coulter is the Republican spokesperson.