Presidential candidates ignore unmarried women & risk successful campaign
Overlooked So Far, The Nation’s Unmarried Women in 2008 was released two days ago. You can read the summary here and the full report here.
From the summary:
So far unmarried women are mostly overlooked, but they are a key to this year’s campaign. A fast-growing demographic that is increasingly focused on politics, these single, divorced, and widowed women compose 26 percent of the electorate—in other words, unmarried women are more than one in four of all voters.
And appalling, unacceptable statistics:
A few facts make clear the challenges unmarried women are facing, and why their agenda is somewhat different from what the nation has heard from the campaigns so far.
- Economically Vulnerable. More than 40 percent of unmarried women have household incomes of less than $30,000 a year. That’s much worse than married women and married men, and worse than unmarried men.
- Work Pays Them Less. Unmarried women make less than others for the same work, and earn only 56 cents to every dollar a married man earns.
- Responsible for Children. The responsibility for taking care of children often falls on unmarried women: There are 12.2 million single-parent families in America, and more than 10 million are headed by single mothers.
- Missing Health Care. Unmarried women are more likely than other Americans to have no health insurance. They were twice as likely to be unable to afford medical care in the past year as women who were married.
- They Rely on Social Security. More than 25 percent of unmarried women rely on Social Security as their only source of income.
…
In this agenda, we outline the steps that leaders, particularly the next president, should take to address the needs of unmarried women. The policy agenda is divided into four categories: Expanding Opportunity by Rewarding Work; A New, Stronger Social Contract; Resolving the War in Iraq; and Improved Health Care for All.
I don’t imagine these numbers are going to reverse without consistent, intense attention, or without our elected lawmakers getting in there and doing something to create jobs, make health care affordable and demand that salaries and work conditions provide the stability and flexibility needed for not only the unmarried women, but especially those with children – since if the woman cannot provide for herself, how is she to provide for the child?
This is, of course, part of why we need more women in elected offices.
Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.
12 Responses to “Presidential candidates ignore unmarried women & risk successful campaign”
I keep wondering how a party that supports unlimited immigration and open border, depolicing, emptying the prisons, quotas for minorities, set asides for minorities, lousy schools, and heavy regulation of the private sector is seen as pro-woman.
Since the Republican Party will soon be irrelevant, the real question is where single women will be in the queue for government goodies. My guess is that they will be behind black men, immigrations, and Hispanics. They will also be behind the northeastern elite who get to be the order givers.
I guess it's all for the good of the general election, but I I'm also disappointed by the campaign because of its narrow agenda. It's been the econom y in a general , promise-them-everything way, with Iraq. as a punctuation mark.
Aside from single mothers, huge issues touched on only in the morst cursory way are the environment and global warming.
I'd like to hear them make statements on all of these issues, detailing the how along with the why. It's kind of sickening to think of all energy and money spent during months of contentious exchanges about, mostly, petty points when what we really need to know is: what i are your plans for dealing with these issues.
The solution isn't government goodies, sorry to inform many.
And where are the fathers?
“And where are the fathers:
So, until we can answer that question, we do nothing?
Problems don't get solved by not dealing with them.
In fact, there are systems in place to find the fathers and collect from them, but they fall very, very short.
In the meantime, children, who didn't create the problem, are the real vicitms.
Sitting around debating who is to blame and figuring out what should NOT be done for them is the best way to make the problem worse.
“So, until we can answer that question, we do nothing?”
That's your contention, not mine.
And,
“debating who is to blame”
It's not only the fathers who are to blame. If you can't or worse, won't face the truth, too bad. [scowl] Nobody said we shouldn't ignore deadbeat dads (who when they are to blame should be the nice little whore-slaves of the state for a while…).
Superdestroyer: My goodness, you really believe that?
runasim: Do you think this will change once the Dem nominee is finalized?
DLS, it is interesting that you never see stories about single men – I don't have a clue as to how many are single and whether they're seen as a voting blog due to being single. I often think of them in terms of the “is the candidate someone I'll have a beer with” kind of thing (I know – not proud of that, just saying).
Very interesting…I'd not thought of this before…
For me, the issues really are 1) the children and 2) given the life expectation of women, how is it NOT in the entire population's best interest to make their concerns generic to the point that they get resolved with everything else – I think particularly in terms of economics but also health care and housing.
:” Do you think this will change once the Dem nominee is finalized?”
One can always hope.
I think, however, that the fight will be high-decibel. That means that an awful lot of time is spent on attack and defense, less for laying out plans.
Runasim: you're probably right. What depresses me about that is that still, the qualities we NEED to be testing/seeing/learning about related to running this country just aren't on display, imo.
“'is the candidate someone I'll have a beer with' kind of thing”
Yes, or (can you stand) going fishing with him kind of thing (or being stuck with him in a spacecraft).