Yesterday I was wondering why the idea that women as voters are a minority is so prevalent in our society. This only seems to be true for Republicans (where women voters ARE a minority)who it seems have a dirty record when it comes to making, keeping, and releasing funds for laws that protect women in this country. According to Women's Voices, Women Vote, more than 40% of single women don't vote.
Comprising one of the electorate's largest and most reliable voting blocs, women are a natural target. They make up 54 percent of the population, 55 percent of registered voters and 60 percent of the electorate
more below
I'm bringing this back as a reminder
* Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women ages 15-44. 1
* There are nearly three times as many animal shelters in the United States as there are shelters for battered women and their children. 2
* 37% of women who sought treatment in emergency rooms for violence-related injuries in 1994 were injured by an intimate partner.3
* Nearly 1 in 3 adult women experience at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood.4
* During the Vietnam War 58,000 American soldiers were killed. During the same time, 51,000 American women were killed by the men who professed to love them.5
* 45% of battered women live in households with children under the age of 12.6
* Boys who witness their fathers' violence are 10 times more likely to engage in spouse abuse in later adulthood than boys from non-violent homes. 7
* 50% of homeless women and children are fleeing domestic abuse.8
* As many as 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy.9
* On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day.10
* Only about 15% of all domestic assaults are reported to the police.11
* Female victims of domestic violence are 6 times less likely to report crime to law enforcement as female victims of stranger violence.12
1 California Department of Health Services, Violence Against Women in California 1992-1999.
2 Senate Judiciary Hearings, Violence Against Women Act, 1990.
3 U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments, August 1997.
4 American Psychological. Association. Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996.
5 American Medical Association, "Five Issues on American Health." Chicago 1991.
6 C.M. Rennison and S. Welchans , Intimate Partner Violence, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Washington , DC : 2000.
7 U.S. Dept. of Justice. Family Violence Interventions for the Justice System, 1993.
8 Sheehan Zorza, Joan. "Woman Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness," in Clearinghouse Review, vol. 25, no. 4, 1991.
9 Gazmararian JA, Petersen R, Spitz AM, Goodwin MM, Saltzman LE, and Marks JS. "Violence and reproductive health; current knowledge and future research directions." Maternal and Child Health Journal 2000: 4(2): 79-84.
10 Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003.
11 Florida Governor's Task Force on Domestic and Sexual Violence, Florida Mortality Review Project, 1997, p. 3.
12 American Psychological. Association. Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996, p. 10.
And the last one from my sister's Obstetrician (i'm not sure what he was quoting) The leading cause of death in pregnant women in the US is murder by their partner.
I'm no number cruncher, but there's got to be some connection between the 1 in 3 women who experience domestic violence (which literally strips women of their will before the first punch is ever thrown) and the 40% of single women who don't vote. I have no way to currently prove this but you probably won't find too many women (yes there will be exeptions) who would be happy about some smug GOP fat-rat blocking the VERY late in the game VAWA that you would think has been around since the bra burning era at least.
Here is a segment from a National Review article
On both questions of "likeability," President Bush does well overall in the AMR survey. On the first question, President Bush bests Senator Kerry by 14 points (43 percent to 29 percent). Turning to the second question, Bush trounces Kerry by a whopping 24 points: 52 percent to 28 percent.
Yet when you break down the numbers by sex and party some even more interesting patterns emerge. Among Republicans, there is no difference on either question -- a large percentage of GOP men and women (between 81 percent and 85 percent, depending on the question) want their kids to grow up like Bush or want to spend time with him.
Among Democrats, however, not only are the overall affirmative percentages on both questions lower, but some significant sex differences emerge. While 70 percent of Democratic men want their kids to grow up like Kerry, only 46 percent of Democratic women do -- a 24 percentage-point difference. And 62 percent of Democratic men want to spend an hour with Kerry, while only 49 percent of that party's women voters do
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
Now consider this, (stats taken from http://www.iwpr.org/... )roughly 22 million unmarried women did NOT vote in 04. In 2000 Gore got 53% of the female vote. In 04 Kerry got 50%. This 3% would have added up to 120,000 votes (assuming that male votes stayed the same as they were in 04 and that Kerry and Bush split Nader's votes 50/50) This would have given Kerry a win in Ohio by 107,000 votes swinging Ohio's 20 electorate votes to Kerry giging him an oh so magical 272. Women were 50/50 split in Ohio between Kerry/Bush according to Voter Service News exit polls ...Iowa 51/49, New Mexico 49/46, New Hampshire 55/46. What would 22 million single, hopefully properly pissed off, female voters do to these numbers???? Freakin landslide I'm sure.
So what were the reasons given for the gaping hole in single female voters? Here is what a Boston globe gave in an OpEd as a reason
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote after the 2004 election. ''He opposed the right to parental notification for minors' abortions, condoned partial-birth abortion, and said not a single word about television's graphic depictions of sex, violence, [and] murder." Democratic leaders, too, often seem bemused by the kind of Americans who ''put religious bumper-stickers on their cars and struggle to 'work on their marriage' while keeping their kids away from sex, drugs, and alcohol, as well as the lesser lures of body piercings, tattoos, gangsta clothes, and other pop fashion."
Male influence. Women are significantly less likely than men to follow national and international affairs, a knowledge gap that researchers have documented for decades. In a new survey conducted for Women's Voices, Women Vote by the Democratic polling firm of GQR Research, a large majority of nonvoting single women -- 70 percent -- said they ''find politics and elections so complicated that it is hard to understand what is really going on.." That helps explain why single women are much less likely to vote. It also explains why married women more often adopt their husband's political outlook -- which tends to be more conservative -- than the other way around
all that was for this - ''find politics and elections so complicated that it is hard to understand what is really going on" - and to further point out the condescending Republican veiw of women in general, and especially as voters.
Finally lets take a look at who introduced VAWA, Biden. I know DKos loves to hate him, I'm just pointing out that he supposedly comes from a red state. But the population in his state Delaware is around 56% female. Another fun fact about DE, according to a probation officer in DE, is that 1/4 of DE's population is either in jail, work release, home confinement, probation or parole. Almost 90% of these are male. Like I said, I'm no number cruncher but that would make the female voter a force to be reckoned with, and apparently someone's been thriving on it. The next senator on board for VAWA was Barbara Boxer.
In conclusion, the women in this country have much more power than their oppressers want them to know about. Women are being duped into feelings of powerlessness when they are in reality the deciding force. Yes there are fundamentalist right wing nut jobs who are women, but THEY are a minority when it comes to eligible voters. Single women (these numbers include divorced women) who tend to be more concerned with Democrat addressed issues are a vast untapped pool of voters who if empowered by the right information by a candidate could make for landslide victories. Ladies, it is in your hands, the power is yours, the CHOICE is yours, literally.