It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Seven

Updated in NOTE at bottom of the article....

Women were given the right to vote prior to the election of 1920 (Republican Warren G. Harding vs. Democrat James Cox),* but it took many years for women to equal the turnout rate for men (voter registration by women lagged behind that of men). As I said in the previous article, change takes time to settle in. During the election of 1964 (Republican Barry Goldwater vs. incumbent Democrat Lyndon Johnson) I recall a lady in our neighborhood telling other women something to the effect, "Voting is a man's business. One of the worst things to ever happen to this country was when they gave women the right to vote." Now that wasn't 1920, but 44 years later! I'm not saying this attitude was the only reason women lagged in turnout, but the fact is, no one really knows why women voted less, but that lady's attitude so many decades later was undoubtedly much more prevalent in the first few elections in which women could vote.

World War Two undoubtedly had an effect on the role of women in American society, as women took to the workplace to fill jobs vacated by men in military service. After the war, many women remained in the workforce, even if only in part time jobs to help supplement the family income. As time passed, so called "women's issues," like equal pay and the jobs women could apply for, for example, began to emerge and undoubtedly motivated women to register and vote in greater numbers, although it must be pointed out, not all women agreed on what were "women's issues." Overall, from 1920 until 1976, men generally turned out to vote by about a 2% to 4% higher percentage than women, although there have been MORE women vote than men since the 1960s.** From 1920 until the 1930s, Republicans seem to have enjoyed an advantage among women, just as among men. In 1976 (Democrat Jimmy Carter vs. incumbent Republican Gerald Ford),*** the gap between male-female turnout narrowed considerably, but men still voted by a larger percentage, but by 1980 (Republican Ronald Reagan vs. incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter) the gap barely existed, although again, more women voted than men.**** The election of 1984 (incumbent Republican Ronald Reagan vs. Democrat Walter Mondale) brought a change in the political demographics, as women voted, not only in greater numbers than men, but for the first time, in a greater percentage than men, a trend that has continued to the present.***** Since the 1980s, Democrats have made concerted efforts to attract female votes, but often with less than stellar results, which shows that the fears of some men that women would dominate the political world and vote distinctly opposite of men has not proven to be true. Rather it has shown that women vote based upon issues in each election and that they are not automatically beholden to either party, although in more recent elections women have gone pretty decisively Democratic.****** Whether this recent trend has to do with the marked shift to the political right by Republicans remains to be seen, but women have now become important to any Democratic coalition.    

In the 1960s, one of the people I admired most was Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine. She was the first woman to serve in BOTH houses of Congress, having been appointed to the House of Representatives to fill the seat of her deceased husband, and then reelected several times, and then elected to the Senate. She was very moderate and worked well with people from both sides of the aisle. She served four terms in the Senate, but lost her bid for reelection in 1972.  

* Harding won a landslide victory and most historians assume he won large majorities of both men and women due to the magnitude of his victory, but there were no exit polls with such breakdowns back then, as in more recent times.

** Beginning with the Census of 1950, women outnumbered men in the U.S. population, but men tended to register to vote and vote in higher percentages than women.

*** Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, and Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, were supporters of the "Equal Rights Amendment" (aka, "ERA"), The amendment sought to guarantee equal rights for women, but the "politics" of the amendment were complicated, as some women, covered by government labor laws, feared the amendment would no longer guarantee those protections, while outright opponents, more from conservative political groups and religious fundamentalists, worked hard for the defeat of the amendment. Labor unions, which were male dominated back then, feared passage would cost their male members jobs, but eventually many unions reversed their opposition and supported the amendment. The amendment passed Congress in 1972, and was supported by Republican President Richard Nixon, but failed to get ratified by enough states. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 election by about 2 million votes, but in the all important Electoral College, the margin was much closer, 297 to 240.

**** Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, with Reagan receiving 50.75% of the popular vote to Carter's slightly more than 41%. In the Electoral College, it was a Reagan landslide, 489 to 49. It should be noted, John Anderson, a former Republican congressman, ran as an independent and received more than 6% of the popular vote, but carried no states, thus receiving no electoral votes. Anderson had some major differences with the growing conservative element of the Republican Party. He is now 92 years old. Reagan opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, the status of which was still being decided by the states at that time. Reagan bested Carter handily among male voters, but only by 47% to 45% among women, with John Anderson receiving about 7% of women's votes.

***** Reagan won in a landslide, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. Democrats made history by nominating Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as their nominee for Vice President, the first woman so nominated by a major party. It didn't help, as Reagan also carried women, although by a smaller percentage than he carried men, by about 56% to 44%.

****** Barack Obama received about 56% of the female vote in 2008, which is more than a tilt.

NOTE: In the 2012 election (Republican Mitt Romney vs. incumbent Democrat Barack Obama), 55 percent of women voted for Obama and 44 percent for Romney, while men voted 52 percent for Romney and 45 percent for Obama. In the 2016 election (Republican Donald Trump vs. Democrat Hillary Clinton), 54 percent of women voted for Clinton to 42 percent for Trump. Trump received 53 percent of men to 41 percent for Clinton. (Figures for both elections from Roper/Cornell University) 

WORD HISTORY:
Rye-This word goes back to Indo European "wrugherio," which meant, "rye" (the grain and the plant). This gave Old Germanic "ruigis/ruigiz," with the same meanings. The Old Germanic word gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "ryge," before the modern version, where the "g" sound died out, the only Germanic language where that happened, although the "g" in not usually all that prominent, or distinct, in German pronunciation. The grain's use to make hard liquor also gave the name to that whiskey, "rye." Common in the other Germanic languages: German has "Roggen," Low German Saxon has "Rogg," Dutch has "rogge," West Frisian "rogge," Danish and Norwegian have "rug," Swedish has råg, and Icelandic has "rúg."