Primary Battles Prove Feminized Values to be Defining Element of 2008 Presidential Race
By Katherine Adam and Charles Derber
As Democrats come closer to choosing their candidate for the 2008 presidential election, gender has emerged again and again as the defining element of the primary race. Hillary has relied heavily on a base of older and working class women. Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton with a feminized personal style and using feminized language about unity and community.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd picked up on this phenomenon, writing, "The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival." Boston Globe writer Ellen Goodman has a different take on the events: "Now we see a woman running as the fighter and a man modeling a 'woman's way' of leading. We see a younger generation in particular inspired by ideas nurtured by women, as long as they are delivered in a baritone. So, has the women's movement made life easier? For another man?"
Dowd and Goodman both touch upon a theme we discuss in our book, The New Feminized Majority: How Democrats Can Change America with Women's Values. The Obama-Clinton gender battle ultimately comes down to feminized values, which will also be the defining element in the 2008 election and beyond.
For many Democrats, it seems strange to talk about values-based politics. We usually equate values with religion. The media calls evangelical conservatives the only “values voters.” Yet, values are nothing more than socially constructed ideals of how the world should be. Many aspects of a person's identity beyond religion create his or her value system –age, race, and nationality. However, the most important values for Democrats to understand are values shaped by gender.
Women's history of oppression, combined with their fights for liberation, have created what we term feminized values. These include empathy, cooperation, and a preference for non-violent solutions to conflicts. Conversely, men's history of political and economic dominance socialize men into a system of masculinized values, including aggression and individualism.
Gender gap data from surveys consistently show this gendered difference. But it is important to understand that gendered values are not embedded in a person's DNA. Women are not inherently more peaceful and nurturing, men are not born as cutthroat, "every man for himself" individualists. (Just look at Condoleezza Rice and Dennis Kucinich.) People, in general, are socialized into values based on gender, but gender is open to variance and change. Men can adopt feminized values, and, as we will show, millions have.
Women's increasing progressivism won't lead to a battle of the sexes showdown. In fact, millions of men are following the feminized progressive example, holding opinions on issues that match those held by a majority of women. This points to the reason Obama or Clinton needs to pay close attention to gendered values: for the first time, feminized values—which are progressive, community-minded, and often closely aligned with Democratic Party policy—are now held by a majority of Americans.
While gender gaps still exist, a large enough minority of men support feminized principles to make them majoritarian. We find these values reflected in issue after issue, in poll after poll. From ending the Iraq War to funding stem cell research, from raising the minimum wage to adopting government-sponsored universal healthcare, the feminized position is the majoritarian position—which means it is the winning position.
While Clinton seemed to be the more "masculinized" candidate in the Democratic race, the differences between Clinton and Obama will seem microscopic once we enter the general election. The race between McCain and the Democratic candidate shows a HUGE chasm between feminized and masculinized morality.
McCain's hypermilitarized foreign policy objectives and traditionalist social policies reflect his masculinized values. At events, he is often flanked by symbols of American masculinity, such as cops and soldiers. These visuals are an attempt to convey a subliminal promise of masculine protectionism: vote for me and men like these will keep your wives and children safe. The other unspoken part of this message is clear: Democrats are too weak and womanly to lead.
Unfortunately for McCain, a majority of Americans have turned away from this dated definition of "strength". With hundreds of thousands dying in Iraq, GIs returning home paralyzed or in body bags, and pictures circulating of hooded Iraqi prisoners with electrodes attached to their bodies, Americans are looking for a new kind of foreign policy. And with multiple corporate mergers, rising poverty rates, and economic inequality unparalleled since the Gilded Age, Americans can't afford anything but new domestic policies.
Obama or Clinton can provide an alternative to the morality offered by McCain. All they need to do is recognize the new feminized majority, and embrace it.
To order “The New Feminized Majority” visit Paradigm Publishing at http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=180321 or Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/New-Feminized-Majority-Katherine-Adam/dp/1594515689/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204436315&sr=8-1
Building beyond Lakoff’s election-year best-seller, Don’t Think of an Elephant, this new book shows how the values of American voters are dramatically shifting. With the arrival of the 2008 election year, a rising feminized majority’—made up of both women and men—is emerging as the pivotal force in American politics. Emerging trends show these values are broadly progressive and address not just the needs of women but the general interests of society. They are held by women substantially more than by men but have become the values held by a majority of all voters, including millions of men.
Like earlier eras in American history, such as the New Deal, the rise of the feminized majority today presents an opportunity for the Democrats to become the governing party for decades to come. Looking beyond the 2008 election, Adam and Derber describe a new political strategy that targets the feminized base and opens up a window for major social justice movements to make progressive change.
Like Lakoff’s, this striking new book—perfectly timed for election year 2008—offers a new vocabulary for every citizen who wants to understand (and reimagine) American politics. It will intrigue and provoke readers, stirring new conversation among progressives and new insights for every citizen interested in politics, morality, religion, values, and social justice.
Reveals the “Three Hillaries” and why two of her three political dimensions consist of masculinized values.
Shows why Obama and Edwards are more “feminized” than Hillary Clinton
Builds beyond Lakoff’s Elephant in showing how gender is increasingly pivotal in political values, and by revealing the deep historical roots of gendered values in America
Looks at the relation between religion, values, and politics in a new way
A book perfectly timed for the first election in which a woman, Hillary Clinton, stands a strong chance of becoming president
Written by a widely experienced political campaigner and a noted social critic
Shows how political discussions have been gender-blind and how gender awareness opens new windows to social justice in America
Gender, Values, and the Democrats
As the only group targeted by a political party using a value-based strategy, evangelicals are seen as the only people who match their actions and politics to their values. Values, however, are a universal human phenomenon. In their simplest form, values are socially constructed views about how the world should be. In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote about the subjectivity of values and how we shape our values to fit our ideas of what makes a perfect society.
But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that it is which he for his part calleth “good”; and the object of his contempt “vile” and “inconsiderable.” For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them. There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of Good or Evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.7
Looking past Hobbes’s notorious pessimism about the human condition, this idea highlights that everyone acts on values and that values are socially constructed. Therefore, values vary from person to person, and a person has the ability to change his or her values.
Although Hobbes refers to an individual’s values, his message translates to larger community values. Americans, for example, hold American values. Every political candidate, on the right or the left, knows that most Americans respond favorably to the idea that a person should be rewarded for hard work. This is a capitalist, American value. Members of other societies might feel that a person should be rewarded for his or her skin color or family bloodline. Every person is socialized into the values of his or her community or nation, and these values then intersect with other values the person has, such as those based his or her religion, race, and socioeconomic class.
Perhaps the most important set of socialized values, however, is based on a person’s gender. We term these values feminized values and masculinized values. In this book, we will outline how men’s and women’s different value systems create divergent views about what America should be. We argue that Americans carry gendered attitudes into the voting booth and, like the evangelicals, vote based on how these values translate to specific political issues.
Just as some groups’ values fall to the more conservative end of the political spectrum, other groups’ values fall to the left. Evangelicals usually support right-wing candidates, because their moral values are highly conservative. We will introduce a group of voters whose values reflect progressive ideals: feminized values voters. If evangelicals represent the key to Republican electoral victory, then feminized values voters represent the chance for Democrats to usher in a new progressive era.
Feminized values are the values into which women are socialized; a majority of women hold these values, as do a smaller percentage of men, for reasons we will describe shortly. The potential for a more progressive era arises because the women and men who hold feminized values make up today a majority of the country and of voters.
We term feminized values voters the feminized majority. These women and men will not only change election outcomes, but also will transform American values and the American Dream. The feminized majority supports a strong welfare state, views social issues through a lens of egalitarianism, and feels that government should do more in general to help its most vulnerable citizens. Feminized majority voters support stem cell research, comprehensive sex education, and environmental protection. They reject violent imperialism. They worry about their long-term economic security and fear that neither party will provide them with adequate health care. In a much deeper and richer way than American masculinized voters, the feminized majority yearns for a progressive, populist America.
We call these voters the feminized majority because the values they carry truly are becoming majoritarian. We will describe the political and economic changes that have led to this point. It is important to remember that President Bush changed the 2004 election by mobilizing evangelicals, who represent only 23 percent of voters. Now, Democrats have the opportunity to change America in dramatic ways with the support of a much larger part of the electorate. While the general perception is that the United States is a conservative country, we shall show that feminized values are held by an increasingly robust majority of voters in the country who are prepared to support a progressive politics of social justice.
The Democrats can lead the feminized majority if they are willing to abandon their triangulation strategy and create a values-based platform. This approach seems unorthodox, because we usually conflate values and morals with religion and conservatism. However, values are nothing more than socially constructed ideals that provide a moral compass for each person, regardless of where he or she falls on the political spectrum. Once Democrats recognize the power of values in elections, they can begin appealing to values voters.
A noted social critic, Charles Derber is a Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Katherine Adam is the Outreach Director for the Philadelphia GROW Project of the Drexel University School of Public Health. She has been active in Democratic Party politics at the federal, state, and local levels, including interning for Senator John Kerry. Derber and Adam collaborated on the newly released nonfiction title, “The New Feminized Majority: How Democrats Can Change America with Women’s Values” which can be purchased at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and from the publisher’s website.
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