Gender gap will be a factor in race for office

With the elections coming in November, University Week is offering a series of faculty interviews on election-related issues. Today we interview Christine Di Stefano, associate professor of political science and director of the National Education for Women’s (NEW) Leadership Program at the UW’s just-opened Center for Women & Democracy.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: We keep hearing about the gender gap as a major factor in the presidential race. Isn’t this exaggerated?

CHRISTINE DI STEFANO: Lots of good research has been done on that by a number of groups, including the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, and it’s pretty clear that there is a gender gap: more women support Gore. More importantly, it’s a gender gap on the policies that most matter to male voters and female voters. So the gender gap is not disappearing.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: What are those issues?

DI STEFANO: Women in this election seem to be most concerned with education, Social Security and Medicare, gun violence and then, for working women, child care, flex-time and those sorts of things. Reproductive rights are secondary at the moment.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: What about men?

DI STEFANO: Men seem to be attracted more to economic issues, taxes and issues having to do with military preparedness.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: This sounds familiar. Haven’t we seen this schism for years?

Christine Di Stefano

DI STEFANO: These issues have everything to do with everyday life experiences and struggles as human beings are experiencing them. It’s not that women are intrinsically interested in education, but to the extent that women tend to be more involved with the rearing and care of young children, they are then more concerned about those issues. Because they are more vulnerable with respect to retirement and Social Security, because of their status in the economy, those issues come to the fore. With respect to the gun issue, you can account for it both in terms of concern for the welfare of their children, and their own vulnerability in this society.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: And they can express those concerns at the ballot box?

DI STEFANO: You bet. There are more eligible women voters than men in the electorate, and a higher proportion of women eligible voters are voting than their male counterparts. This has been happening since 1980. The latest data show there’s an eight million vote difference between men and women.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: That sounds like good news for Al Gore.

DI STEFANO: Yes, but women are a higher proportion of the undecided voters right now. Currently, women voters make up two-thirds of the undecided voters in the presidential race. How those undecided voters swing is going to be very crucial. And that’s where many pollsters and analysts and strategists are focusing their attention.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: With so much electoral clout, wouldn’t we expect more women in office? Shouldn’t we at least have 50 women senators?

DI STEFANO: You would expect that, but at the current rate of change, there will be parity in the Congress in the year 2500! So let’s not get too excited.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: Equality’s going to take 500 years?

DI STEFANO: Well, the pattern for women has been to get involved at the local level. Part of the picture has to do with mentoring, which is very important in political careers. As more women are achieving success and prominence, we would expect to see more woman-to-woman mentoring, pulling women up behind you. But all of that takes time.

UNIVERSITY WEEK: Isn’t that part of why you established the Center for Women & Democracy?

DI STEFANO: Yes. One of our two lead projects is a National Education for Women (NEW) Leadership Program. Beginning in summer 2001, we will offer political leadership education for undergraduate women in the Puget Sound area. We’ll have about 50 students at a summer institute every year, including but not limited to University of Washington students.

Our other major project is women’s trade missions, which are designed to stimulate women-to-women contacts for the purposes of developing trade relationships, helping to stimulate new women-owned businesses. We’ve got a trade mission to Cuba planned for this coming spring.

Our center will support traditional academic research and curriculum development, but we are also interested in developing networks of information sharing and collaboration, between the University and other communities in the Puget Sound area and globally.

You know one of the outstanding issues today is that in areas of the world that are undergoing what everybody refers to as democratization, women are losing political ground. We definitely see this going on in Central and Eastern Europe right now. How and why this happens is one of the outstanding research questions of our time. “Democracy” isn’t always good for women. The key mission of our center is to contribute to the development of democratic initiatives, practices and institutions that actually function as if women mattered.