Women and children and votes
Working women are the target constituency of the day for the Kerry campaign. It was a nice speech, although the accompanying policy paper is just a rehash of proposals that have been on the table for months — an increased minimum wage, reiterated support for social security, an expanded child care tax credit, and so forth.
There’s no surprise that the Kerry campaign should be targeting women — for years women typically are more likely to vote Democratic — the famous gender gap. It is interesting to me that they’re framing the appeal as to “working women” rather than “mothers” or “working mothers” or “workers” or “women.” (Women with no more than a high school education and unmarried parents are among the groups most reached by the voter registration drives this year.)
I got an email today about Parents’ Action for Children, the new name for what used to be called the “I am Your Child Foundation.” Their legislative agenda focuses on quality child care, preschool, and health insurance for all children. This overlaps extensively with the Family Initiative, which focuses on child care, preschool, and afterschool care. I think the main difference is that the Family Initiative comes out of the women’s movement, and is somewhat more oriented towards child care solutions that work for working parents, while Parents’ Action comes from a child-focused perspective. As long as we’re mostly in the consciousness-raising phase, they’re clearly allies, although I could imagine conflicts if we ever got to the stage of drafting legislation.
The Parents’ Action website also has parenting advice, which I think is in part a hook to draw parents in. That makes sense: Sara Horowitz used to argue that AARP was so successful as a lobbying group because of all the people who joined to get their discounts on drugs. I keep telling people that I think we should colocate all sorts of social services with laundromats, because they provide a captive audience that isn’t necessarily in a rush.
