The real reason Romney is struggling with women voters
Back in February, things started to look dire for the Romney campaign’s ability to attract female voters. Every day brought another story about Republican attacks on reproductive rights: attacks on insurance coverage for contraception, transvaginal probes, all-male panels called in Congress to discuss contraception, attacks on Planned Parenthood’s funding, and the candidate himself increasingly afraid to say a positive word about contraception when asked directly in the debates. A gender gap opened up between the candidates in the polls, with Obama outpacing Romney with women by 19 points. The Romney campaign responded by trying to change the subject, to jobs and the economy. But if Romney wants to close the gender gap, he should rethink that strategy. After all, the polling data suggests that his stance on economic issues – specifically the size of the safety net and amount of economic support the government provides to citizens – is what’s really hurting him with female voters.
The real war between the sexes may not be over feminism or sex so much as whether or not our tax dollars should go to social spending. Research conducted by Pew in October 2011 showed women support a strong, activist government in much larger numbers than men. On the question of whether the government should offer more services, women said yes by 9 more percentage points than men. The gender gap on social spending remained when pollsters asked about specific interest groups. Women wanted more spending on the elderly than did men by 11 percentage points, more spending on children by 10 percentage points and more spending on the poor by 9 percentage points.
Female voters respond much more strongly than male voters to government providing pragmatic solutions and real-world support for ordinary citizens, which helps explain why women flock to Obama and to the Democrats in general. In fact, with college-educated white voters, the gender differences are nothing short of astounding. In this group, female voters prefer Obama 60 to 40, and male voters prefer Romney 57 to 39.
As the lingering downturn puts economic issues front and center in the election, a ballooning gender gap was entirely predictable. Voters cite healthcare and economic issues as their top concerns, and with all the discussion of the student loan crisis of late, that will likely become part of the larger concerns about jobs and the economy. Knowing this, Romney wants to keep talking about these issues.
Support for healthcare reform remains low, at 43 percent, but as the public learns more about what the Affordable Health Care Act provides, the polling numbers have been creeping up a bit. With female voters, the uptick has been swift, with 47 percent of female voters supporting the new law in late March, 10 percentage points up from November. Student loan debt is another issue where women lean more to the left than men. In a recent Daily Kos/SEIU poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, more women than men – by 6 percentage points – supported legislation to keep student loan rates low, a policy that, because of congressional Republicans’ protest, voters strongly associate with Democrats, not Republicans.
Not that reproductive health issues don’t matter to female voters, but women voters have a more expansive view of what meaningful contraception policy looks like. They don’t just want the government to protect the legal right to use contraception; they also want it to enact policies that make sure birth control is affordable for all women, regardless of income. Fifty-five percent of women cite government contraception policy as an important issue for them, compared with 35 percent of men, according to Gallup. By requiring insurance companies to cover contraception and by protecting Planned Parenthood’s funding, the Obama administration appealed to female voters’ preference for a government that offers services as well as ensures reproductive rights.
The next emerging market: A billion women
You would never dream of not investing in India. You would never dream of not investing in China. So why wouldn’t you invest in women? That question was posed by Beth Brooke of Ernst & Young at the launch on Wednesday of a campaign called The Third Billion that aims to empower women as a means to drive economic growth. The campaign is based on the notion that there are a billion women not participating in the global economy who should be.
“Every country, every company in the world is looking for growth wherever they can find it,” Brooke said at a panel discussion (which I moderated) at Thomson Reuters headquarters in New York. “Where is the growth coming from? It’s coming from the emerging markets … We historically think of those emerging markets as India and China and many others. But it is clear that women are an emerging market.”
DeAnne Aguirre, senior vice-president at Booz & Company, said the concept of the “Third Billion” comes from the notion that if China and India each represent 1 billion emerging participants in the global marketplace, then a third billion is made up of women around the world whose economic lives have been “stunted, underleveraged or suppressed.”
The figure is based on a Booz & Company analysis of International Labor Organization data on women in the global workforce that showed some 860 million women were excluded for one reason or another, a number forecast to rise to 1 billion in the next decade. (Many of those women are in India and China, of course, so there is overlap with the first and second billions.)
La Pietra Coalition, the global alliance behind the campaign, has identified five factors that contribute to keeping women from playing a more productive role: access to finance; legal and social status; barriers to entrepreneurship; lack of education and training; and labor policy and practice.
The group wants to bring together corporations, governments, NGOs and institutions such as the World Bank to address each of those issues.
Among those that have already partnered with La Pietra are Coca Cola, Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered Bank. Brooke, who is global vice-chair for public policy at Ernst & Young, said a key goal of the campaign is to enlist more big companies.
from The Great Debate UK:
Women on course to control larger proportion of wealth
- Jane Foley is research director at Forex.com and blogs regularly for Reuters Great Debate. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in. -
Projections indicate that by 2050 the world’s population will stand at around 9.2 billion, up from around 6.7 million at present. The vast majority of this increase will be in the developing world. In developed world countries populations may start tapering off after 2025.
It seems likely that this explosion in population in the developing world will do nothing to address the fact that that per capita wealth is massively skewed towards the developed world. Using World Bank data for 2000, the average per capital wealth in the top 10 wealthiest countries is a staggering 170 times greater than the average in the bottom ten. Demographics in the developed world are defined by low fertility and low mortality rates. This translates into an ageing population. Added to this mix is the fact that male mortality rates are higher than female in the developed world. As a consequence, as these populations age they are becoming predominantly female. It follows that women are on course to control an increasing proportion of the world’s wealth. Reports that suggest that women are responsible for buying 80 percent of household goods in the U.S. will not be a surprise to the seasoned shopper. Over the past decade or so it appears that the advertising industry has been waking up to the notion that women’s responsibilities stretch further than making decisions on washing powder.
A recent U.S. NBC/Universal poll shows that women are just as likely to want to be involved as men in all stages of buying a car. The same poll showed that 46 percent of female respondents were the family’s breadwinner. While there is little argument that women are well practiced at making consumption decisions, there is less clear evidence to suggest how well they behave as investors. By definition a person’s decision to spend implies a decision not to save. Consumption and investment are rigorously linked. Over a person’s life-cycle a saver will, on retirement, eventually fall back on her savings.
The retirement of the baby-boomers (born between 1945 and 1964) could have a huge actuarial impact on the stock market and other investment vehicles given the increased potential for drawdowns. Just as the demographic structure is important, it is also possible that the increasing proportion of women in populations of the developed world may also have an influence on investment vehicles. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and some studies that suggest that women are more researched and less impulsive investors then men; a fact that some surveys attribute to women being, on balance, more risk-averse. An interesting offshoot of the financial crisis was a discussion that male dominance in trading rooms and board rooms led to excessive risk taking that may have been countered with a female influence.
It could take decades before women have proportional representation on senior management committees, so this theory is unlikely to be tested for some time. More timely results may come from how women approach decisions on their personal investments. Clients of Forex.com are predominantly male, but during the course of 2009 the percentage of female customers increased by 50 percent.
Closing the wealth gap between men and women
– Mariko Chang is author of the forthcoming book “Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It.” A former Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard, she is a member of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development’s Experts of Color Network. The views expressed are her own. –
I cheered when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law one year ago. But on its first anniversary, I find the pessimist in me prevails. My skepticism isn’t about this new law, but rather our almost myopic focus on equal pay as the panacea for women’s economic inequality. It’s the inequality in wealth we need to address.
You may recall that Ledbetter was a supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama who, after almost 20 years of employment, received an anonymous note containing the salaries of three other male supervisors. The sole woman among 16 supervisors, Ledbetter was the lowest paid person in her position, earning $3,727 per month. Salaries for the men in the same position ranged from $4,286 to $5,236 per month, despite some having less seniority and experience. Over 19 years, cumulative salary discrepancies cost Ledbetter more than $200,000 in wages.
Sadly, Ledbetter is not an exception. The wage gap costs an average woman almost a half a million dollars in income over her working years, according to Lifetime Losses, a report by Jessica Arons of the Center for American Progress. But this lifetime earnings gap is only the tip of the iceberg because it creates further inequities as lower wages translate into lower pension and Social Security benefits.
There is no doubt we need to keep working to close the pay gap between women and men. But there is equally important, if not more important, work to be done to close the wealth gap between them.
While women ages 18-64 make 77 percent of what men make, Federal Reserve data reveals they have only 36 percent as much wealth. Wealth, which is the value of your assets minus your debts, translates into your ability to take an unpaid sick day, to buy a home, and secure a comfortable retirement. Many people have no wealth at all, and some even have what sociologists call “negative wealth” — meaning the value of their debts surpasses the value of their assets. Almost one in three single women ages 18-64 has no wealth or negative wealth. In comparison, about 12 percent of married couples and 24 percent of single men fall into this category.
The current economic crisis reveals how critical it is to have some wealth to fall back on. Wealth is our personal safety net, providing funds if you lose your job, can’t work because of illness, or face a hefty unexpected expense. Only a few of us haven’t faced at least one of these situations in the last couple of years.
Quality early education: Good for kids and the economy
– Joan Wasser Gish is a consultant in the Boston area. A former senior policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, she recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. The views expressed are her own. –
When the toys are put away and the last youngster is picked up for the day, early childhood education providers like all other entrepreneurs sit down to assess their revenues, account for expenses and make difficult business decisions. And though their services are rife with hugs and games and songs, their work has serious implications for the economy. The child-care sector is a critical driver of economic growth and workforce development. That is why financial leaders and policymakers should do more to support providers as both educators and small-business entrepreneurs.
There are more than 400,000 licensed child-care facilities across the country. They span the economic sectors, with the majority run as sole proprietorship home-based businesses, and the rest split between for-profit and non-profit centers offering early education and care. Most are run by women, and a significant proportion are owned and operated by members of minority groups. Because of the early education and care services they provide, they contribute to both short- and long-term economic growth.
Quality early childhood education is associated with improved worker availability and productivity. Early childhood education enables parents to participate in the labor force. Studies have shown that availability of good early childhood education can reduce employee turnover by 37 to 60 percent.
Conversely, breakdowns in child-care availability are associated with absenteeism, tardiness, and reduced concentration at work. One study estimates that unstable care arrangements leading to absences cost American businesses $3 billion annually.
Early childhood education establishments also contribute to the economy as employers and catalysts of community development. The Oakland-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development estimates that the child-care industry generates more than $50.6 billion in annual gross receipts and 1.85 million full-time equivalent jobs nationwide. When centers locate in low-income urban and rural communities, which many non-profits and some for-profits do, they hire from the local community, enable low- and moderate-income families to participate in the labor force, and purchase and renovate facilities.
But the greatest economic impact of high-quality early childhood education is its beneficial effect on enrolled children. Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman argues that high-quality early education provides “the advantage of an early start to their skill development improving their chances of successfully participating in the job market in later years.”
Early childhood control of the child by the state will lead to state contol of the child’s future as well as of the child’s parents. State sponored humanism will more easily florish and the de-establishment religous values.
No quotas for women on corporate boards
– Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-
Although women moved into the workforce in great numbers in the 1980s, they still have to catch up to men in terms of leadership positions in corporate America. The New York human resources firm Catalyst found that women hold 16.9 percent of officer positions in American corporations, and only 11 percent of senior leadership line roles.
The question is, why are there so few women corporate board members? Those who have a proclivity to assume sex discrimination might fear the worst. Others might simply assume that relatively few qualified women were available for board slots, or that boards with women performed poorly in the marketplace.
Earlier this month the London School of Economics released a new study showing that publicly-traded companies with more women on the boards of directors do better in terms of firm management but worse in terms of economic performance. The study, entitled Women in the Boardroom and Their Impact on Governance and Performance, was just published in the Journal of Financial Economics.
The authors, economists Renee Adams of the University of Queensland, Australia, and Daniel Ferreira, of the London School of Economics, conclude that additional women improve the governance of the firm. Female board members were more likely to be assigned to audit, nominating, and corporate governance committees and they had higher attendance at board meetings. Chief executive officers of companies with female directors are held to a higher standard of accountability.
Surprisingly, the authors claim to have statistical results that reveal precisely this politically incorrect result: firms with women on board have lower return on assets than firms without women board members. The firms are less profitable and have lower financial performance.
If that result seems counter-intuitive, you may be correct. The statistical results presented by the authors are not robust to changes in specification, and many of the key estimated parameters are not significantly different from zero. Even more troubling, some of the statistical techniques employed appear to be poorly chosen.
It’s really a pipeline issue in getting more women onto boards. We’ve found http://www.ceowomensclub.com/articles/Co rporate-Women-Solutions-Work women tend to fall out of the pipeline as they take care of family and childcare issues. They don’t progress and get the jobs and visibility needed to position themselves for board level opportunities.
They also are at a disadvantage because companies tend to find candidates through processes that usually have more men in the system such as search firms or the CEOs friends and acquaintances. They tend to surface those with prior experience who would be predominately men. Women need to proactively network their way on in
Are women paid less than men?
— Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-
One of the concerns of working women is the “pay gap” – the alleged payment to women of 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man. But there are more behind these numbers than first meets the eye, because women work different hours, major in different subjects, and choose different careers.
The 78 percent figure comes from comparing the 2007 full-time median annual earnings of women with men, the latest year available from the Census Bureau. The 2007 Department of Labor data show that women’s full-time median weekly earnings are 80 percent of men’s.
Just comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly, without accounting for differences in jobs, training, or time in the labor force, yields a ratio of 87.2 percent, with a smaller pay gap.
These wage ratios are calculated from government data and do not take into account differences in education, job title and responsibility, regional labor markets, work experience, occupation, and time in the workforce. When economic studies include these major determinants of income, rather than simple averages of all men and women’s salaries, the pay gap shrinks even more.
A report by Jody Feder and Linda Levine of the Congressional Research Service entitled “Pay Equity Legislation in the 110th Congress,” declared that “Although these disparities between seemingly comparable men and women sometimes are taken as proof of sex-based wage inequities, the data have not been adjusted to reflect gender differences in all characteristics that can legitimately affect relative wages (e.g. college major or uninterrupted years of employment).”
Many academic studies of gender discrimination focus on the measurement of the wage gap. Dozens of studies have been published in academic journals over the past two decades. These studies attempt to measure the contributing effects of all the factors that could plausibly explain the wage gap. The remaining portion of the wage gap that cannot be explained by measurable variables is frequently termed “discrimination.”
My favorite study on wage inequality was done by a Swedish researcher. When all other things were equal, women still earned less. Upon digging further, he determined that women didn’t play enough hardball during wage negotiations, and also were less likely to leave for more money (thereby staying at a lower paying job). Having hired many people, I find the negotiating factor to be sadly too true. So girls — let’s demand more! We’re so much more dependable than men, so we deserve it! Fight!
Women small business owners really need healthcare reform
– Nancy Duff Campbell is a founder and co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, one of the nation’s pre-eminent women’s rights organizations. A recognized expert on women’s law and public policy issues, for over thirty-five years Ms. Campbell has participated in the development and implementation of key legislative initiatives and litigation protecting women’s rights, with a particular emphasis on issues affecting low income women and their families. The views expressed are her own. —
Insurance companies and others who profit from our broken health care system are mobilizing to defeat comprehensive reform by using misinformation and scare tactics. A prime example is the allegation that healthcare legislation – specifically the plan being considered by the House of Representatives – will hurt small businesses.
The fact is that small business owners, especially women, are already hurting under our current healthcare system. Leah Daniels, 29, is the owner of Hill’s Kitchen – a gourmet kitchenware store that opened last May not far from the U.S. Capitol. Daniels can’t afford to offer health insurance to her three employees. She purchased her own bare-bones plan on the individual market for protection “in case I get hit by a car,” but not much else. It costs her just under $200 a month and doesn’t cover such services as routine doctor’s visits or maternity care. Daniels, who often works 7 days a week, says that she is constantly worried about getting sick.
Daniels’ problems are, unfortunately, all too typical. A new report by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) found that small businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large firms for the same health insurance policy. These higher costs mean that small businesses are considerably less likely than larger businesses to provide health insurance to their employees, and those that do tend to have less comprehensive plans. And Census data show that women-owned businesses are generally smaller than male-owned businesses.
Small business owners and employees who don’t get coverage at work or through a spouse’s plan may shop for insurance individually. But if they are women – and small businesses that don’t offer health coverage tend to have large proportions of female workers – they are likely to face discrimination in the individual health insurance market. A study by the National Women’s Law Center found that insurance companies routinely charge women higher rates than men for individual policies and offer policies that exclude health needs specific to women, such as maternity care.
Women who own a small business know that the current health care system is failing them. At a meeting of women small business owners in May, Daniels says, “We went around the room and everyone either had health insurance through their spouse or didn’t have coverage at all. Women talked about being afraid to go to the doctor because they didn’t want to find out that they might be sick. It was really striking.”
The healthcare reform plans that have begun moving through Congress would help make it possible for small business owners to offer comprehensive, affordable health insurance. The House plan would make insurance more affordable by prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of health status or gender and by allowing small businesses to purchase coverage through a new Health Insurance Exchange. The Exchange would reduce administrative costs and offer a choice of plans meeting minimum benefit standards. New tax credits would be available to help some small businesses pay for employee health coverage; the credit would be worth 50 percent of the cost of qualified health coverage expenses for businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average wages of $20,000 or less. It would gradually be reduced until firms reached 25 or more employees or average wages of $40,000 or more.
Obviously the law has been enacted by now. We’ll see if it changes in the courts or through Congress. We’ve found http://www.ceowomensclub.com/articles/Fe male-Entrepreneurs-Reality that this is an important issue for women business owners. The cost and potential fear of getting sick can impact the most successful woman business owner
The gender gap in personal finance
It’s not surprising that men and women handle their personal finances differently. Yet, data collected by the employee benefits company Financial Finesse shows that men trump women when it comes to managing their wallets.
Out of the 3,500 U.S. workers polled, 90 percent of men said they pay their bills on time each month compared to only 74 percent of women. Also, 71 percent of men said they have a handle on their cash flow so they spend less than they earn each month, while only 53 percent of women could claim the same.
Manisha Thakor, a Houston-based finance expert for women, explains that women tend to be less educated in personal finance.
“Men talk socially about money and business,” said Thakor. “Women are talking about nurturing subjects.”
Also, women are paid less than men, making such things as paying bills and credit card balances harder, she said.
Who handles finances better in your household?
Did the polling take place at an old timers men’s-only club? (Insert cough from cigar smoke)
I am better informed on the principles of finance and economics compared to my girlfriend, but she is much better at saving and managing money. I, however, have taken classes in finance and economics for my masters in Public Administration whereas she earned her masters in Speech Pathology, that is the only reason I am better informed.
If you want to look at it from an evolutionary perspective (To Peter H.), then women should be better at managing the resources that men bring home. We will just go back to patrolling the perimeter not sitting around dividing the resources between the group.
Gender equality: From sports to math and science
–- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-
The Obama administration is considering a proposal to use federal regulations to expand women’s participation beyond college athletics to the selection of courses, especially in mathematics, science and engineering.
The proposal to apply so-called Title IX gender-equality to selection of courses and majors was discussed at a White House conference on June 23, and endorsed by Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and assistant to the president, and Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
Title IX, passed in 1972 as an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has been interpreted to mean that universities which accept federal funds cannot have more male athletes than female, even though more men than women generally want to play sports. Hence, many collegiate men have not been able to participate in intercollegiate athletics, and men’s sports teams have been terminated all over the country.
Title IX was intended to protect against sex discrimination, but not to allow the use of quotas. Indeed, it specifically prohibited arbitrary leveling of student numbers by gender. Yet the courts have required universities to adopt a proportionality standard for college sports if they wished to avoid lawsuits. If 52 percent of the students are female, then 52 percent of sports slots have to go to women.
In a telephone conversation yesterday Ali told me that although the administration will extend Title IX to math and science, it does not intend to argue for proportionality. Instead, the administration will make sure that secondary schools and universities do not discriminate against girls and women when it comes to selection of courses and majors, citing anecdotal evidence that some girls and women are counseled against taking courses in math and science.
Since Title IX is already law, congressional approval is unnecessary. The new initiative will not require new formal regulations, just a change in enforcement.
I am a female law student at a Top Ten school, and I am surrounded by other females who were at the top of their undergraduate classes. Many of them decided to go into law because they are “not good at science or math.” Obviously, this cannot be true, since they had to receive top scores their entire academic careers in every subject in order to get where they are today (including standardized testing).
However, it is not discrimination that made these women think that they were “bad at math.” Instead, I think it was the general societal disinclination for math and science careers, which are populated by people who are characterized as boring and nerdy. Where are the great scientists that young people want to emulate? Where is the dashing female Marie Curie that makes little girls want to do equations? The simple fact is that as long as math and science careers have little interpersonal interaction, as long as the workplace for these careers is the cubicle, and as long as there seems to be little light in the drabness of the science career, women just won’t want to do it.
There are two types of Republicans:
1) The rich
2) The gullible