Netroots Nation panel 2009

A recent study entitled, “Mom Bloggers Voices and Votes Influence State of Union” comes to the conclusion that women online have a huge impact on politics and social issues.   The graphics proclaim “Mom bloggers vote!” “Mom bloggers care!” Mom bloggers are “motivated!”

To that I say, ya’ think?

Now, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t conduct any statistical analyses when I wrote Mothers of Intention: How Women and Social Media are Revolutionizing Politics in America.  But when I was looking for essays to include in the book, it didn’t take me long to find a whole lot of smart ladies writing online about the issues they care about, so it seems to me that most of the revelations of this new study have been pretty evident to anyone who’s been paying attention.

So, is the study a stunning revelation or are people just now tuning in to what’s been going on for years?  You can read the rest of what I think about this study over at PunditMom’s Spin Cycle at Babble Voices!

Image via Joanne Bamberger. All rights reserved.

Lace as a Metaphor for Political Change from The Woman Citizen

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Sister Citizen at Feministing

Could Unmarried Women Cost Obama Re-election in 2012? at Huffington Post

Senate blocks money for teachers, firefighters at the Washington Post

W. enters my wife’s school board race at Salon, an astonishing look at how corporate money is impacting even local races

Discuss!

Image via Joanne Bamberger.  All rights reserved.

via iStock Photo/Sean Locke

Women candidates for president or vice president have been far and few between in our lifetimes. Until 2008, to see any woman on a national ticket, regardless of party, was a rarity.  Sure, there were a couple of famous exceptions like Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun.  But it’s pretty well accepted that the first viable run for the White House by a woman was when now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought the 2008 Democratic nomination.  As for the vice presidential slot, the major parties have each had exactly one woman nominee — Geraldine Ferraro for the Democrats in 1984 and Sarah Palin for the GOP in 2008.

Fast forward to the 2012 race and Palin is finally, officially, out after months of teasing voters with her maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t-bus-tour.  GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is still in, but her poll numbers suggest she won’t be for long.  And while she has repeatedly said she won’t, plenty of Hillary fans hope she’ll change her mind and give President Obama a run for his money.  So with women candidates on our minds now more than ever before in our history, have the 21^st century candidacies of Clinton, Palin and Bachmann created a new segment of women voters – ones who will turn away from political races that don’t include a woman?

Studies have shown that women traditionally participate less in politics – both in running for office, as well as in discussing the candidates – than men.  The interest of women and girls of all ages in attending political speeches or volunteering for candidates seemed, at least anecdotally, to be super-charged by the presence of strong, focused women on the tickets three years ago.  Throngs of mothers with little girls turned out just to see Palin on the campaign trail.  Mothers of Hillary-loving daughters became first time campaign volunteers because their girls were so excited about the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy.  So in a 2012 race that looks like it will soon have no estrogen, what happens to the engagement and excitement of women voters?

While I don’t think women will ignore the next presidential race, I suspect many will feel less invested in the outcome if the race is filled with a sea of men.

So with the GOP frontrunner status being a moving target, having shifted from Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Ron Paul, and the knowledge that women make up the majority of voters, keeping women interested will be the key winning the GOP nomination in 2012.  As for the Democrats, some observers believe that women voters are still licking their political wounds in light of President Obama’s win over Clinton and that progressive women will, at the very least, decamp from the Obama ranks for someone else.  All of this is hard to predict with more than a year to go before Election Day 2012.  But one thing is certain – no one can win without the women’s vote, so whoever really wants to be living in the White House on January 21, 2013, had better find a way to effectively engage them so they don’t focus on the fact that there’s no one at the debates wearing heels and hose.

Unless Betty White really is in the race.  Now there’s a candidate I could support!

Originally posted at iVillage.com.

American moms aren’t the only ones who get all fired up about politics.  With Canadian elections coming up next week, mothers up north are voicing their views on what’s happening in their country.  I’m excited to have as my guest Mother of Intention Annie from PhD in Parenting — a woman many of us know is definitely not afraid of speaking her mind — who weighs in on what it really means when politicians say they want to be “tough on crime.”  After reading this, it made me wonder if American politicians and Canadian officials try to drum up support using the same playbook.

Canada is in the middle of a tough election campaign which ends on May 2. This early election is the result of the Conservative government losing the confidence of the House of Commons. The Conservatives were found to be in contempt of Parliament for refusing to share information that opposition members needed to assess legislation before the House.

In this campaign, there is a significant divide between the issues and promises being pushed by the Conservatives and those being promised by the other four major parties: The Liberal Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party of Canada. This divide can be seen on many issues, including the issue of crime.

The Conservatives “law and order” agenda

The Conservative Party of Canada has a plan. If re-elected, they promise to implement a “tough on crime” agenda.

Law-abiding Canadians expect to live in a country where they don’t have to worry when they go to bed at night; where they don’t have to look over their shoulders as they walk down the street; where they can expect to find their car where they parked it. – Conservative Party of Canada Electoral Platform

The Conservative promises include crackdowns on human smuggling and contraband tobacco, as well as promises to lengthen sentences and make it more difficult for prisoners to be granted parole. The Conservative party knows that this, along with other “law and order” initiatives they have implemented over the past few years, means that the prison population will increase steadily in years to come. In January, the Conservative government announced several prison expansion projects (construction jobs = economic recovery!) that would cost $158 million and create 634 new spaces. Overall, the parliamentary budget officer estimates that tougher sentences could cost between $10 billion and $18 billion over five years (source: Toronto Star).

Why this expensive “tough on crime” stance when crime in Canada has been steadily decreasing?

Canada’s crime rate is down 17% from 10 years ago and the crime severity index is down 22% from 10 years ago (source: Statistics Canada). But statistics don’t win elections; fear does. The increasingly gruesome and sensationalized media reporting on crimes combined with the fear mongering of the Conservative Party’s campaign may be more likely to sway votes than the reality portrayed through the statistics.

According to Statistics Canada, The Canadian incarceration rate is about 117 inmates per 100,000 population (compared to the United States rate of 760 per 100,000). The American incarceration rate, which is significantly higher than all other Western democracies, has quadrupled since the 1970s. Former Republican U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency head Asa Hutchison has warned Canada not to repeat his government’s mistakes. According to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Hutchison says the Republicans’ approach did not put enough emphasis on preparing convicts for release and that their mandatory minimum sentences often put people behind bars who did not need to be there.

If bigger prisons and tougher sentences isn’t the answer, what is?

Instead of simply lengthening sentences and increasing incarceration rates, Canada’s other political parties have proposed a variety of initiatives to help address the roots of crime. For example:

The Harper government’s narrow preoccupation concerning our communities has been punishing crime, and exploiting fear. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that just one of their piecemeal sentencing Bills will cost federal and provincial governments $10 to 13 billion over five years, for building US-style mega-prisons. No one disagrees that criminals must be punished. But more prisons alone will not make our communities safer and stronger. That approach has failed in the U.S. Evidence and experience suggest it will take much more than prisons. – Liberal Party of Canada Platform

This is followed by a series of promises on issues like affordable housing, fighting poverty, fixing problems with the long gun registry, establishing a task force to examine the systemic causes of increasing abuse and murder rates of Aboriginal women, and more. The Liberal Party’s platform also includes funds for early childhood learning and care across the country. The New Democratic Party’s platform includes proposed funding for an anti-gang strategy to ensure that our prisons do not serve as “crime schools”, youth crime prevention programs, and proper care and treatment for mentally ill prisoners.

They have also proposed a variety of social programs tackling issues like daycare and early childhood education, mental health, affordable housing, and poverty reduction. The Green Party and the Bloc Quebecois also have proposed significant measures to tackle poverty. In fact, all parties except the Conservatives have pledged support for the Make Poverty History goals.

Experts on criminal justice agree that this is the way to go. According to the Toronto Star article, Solving Crime? Tackle the root causes first, the steps that lead to safer communities are:

• Reduce poverty and school dropout rates.
• Invest in comprehensive childhood development initiatives.
• Make housing affordable.
• Increase access to health care and rehabilitative programs.
• Reduce incarceration rates, partly through alternatives to jail, and direct savings to neighborhoods with a high number of offenders.

While ignoring the cost of proposed mega-prisons and new fighter jets, supporters of the Conservatives ask: “Where is the money for those social programs going to come from?” The parties all have budgets that outline the proposed sources of revenue for their spending promises. However, experts on crime reduction suggest that with time the cost of those programs could be erased through lower crime rates. According to the Toronto Star:

Attacking root causes doesn’t have to be expensive, especially if savings from reduced incarceration are reinvested in troubled neighbourhoods. With crime costing an estimated $70 billion annually, $1.8 billion of it for prisons, cost-benefit analyses have repeatedly shown such investments would save many more billions in the long run.

The “tough on crime” choice facing Canada

Our country has a choice when it comes to the “tough on crime” agenda:

• We can support programs such child care funding to help care for and educate children for about 8 hours per day when they are young or we can defer the payment and pick up the tab with 24 hour a day maximum security care when they are older.
• We can help low income Canadians feed their families and lift themselves out of poverty or we can pay for three meals a day for an increasing roster of inmates.
• We can invest in affordable housing programs or we can pay for expensive prison cells.
• We can ensure access to mental health services for Canadian youth and families or we can pay to lock them up when they cannot take it anymore.

Certainly not every undereducated, poor, homeless or mentally ill person becomes a criminal and not every criminal is undereducated, poor, homeless or mentally ill. However, we do know that addressing those issues and addressing them early will significantly decrease crime rates, improve the quality of life of Canadians, and save us money in the long run. Are Canadians so short sighted that we would rather pay to lock everyone up now than invest in a better future? I hope not.

Can moms save the vote?

In past elections, around half of Canadian moms didn’t bother to vote. This sad reality, along with the fact that many Canadian moms on social media didn’t seem to be talking about the election, led Emma Waverman and Karen Green to start the “Mom The Vote” initiative a few weeks ago. Using #momthevote on twitter and a Mom The Vote facebook page, they encouraged moms to engage in an online discussion of election issues. The discussion on both channels has been extremely active in this campaign where many of the political parties have platforms specifically addressing family issues.

Whether the active discussion translates into more votes by moms remains to be seen. But if it does, those moms could be part of a tide of change in our country. Polls have been showing a significant increase in support for the New Democratic Party across the country, but in particular from women, voters under age 45, and Quebeckers. The “Mom the Vote” crowd could be part of a shift from a “tough on crime” agenda that focuses on locking more people up for longer periods of time to an agenda focused on addressing issues of importance to families, which coincidentally also happen to address the root causes of crime.

Annie is a social, political and consumer advocate on issues of importance to parents, women and children. She has been blogging about the art and science of parenting on the PhD in Parenting Blog since May 2008. Annie has been covering the Canadian election on her own blog, as well as on Care2 Causes blog and The Bad Moms Club. You can find her on twitter (@phdinparenting) and Facebook (http://facebook.com/phdinparenting).

… Nevada could have a senator who is out of touch with the issues of her state’s immigrant population and believes any girl or woman who is raped should be forced to carry the rapist’s child because, after all, it’s better to make lemonade out of lemons.

… Delaware could have a senator who doesn’t care to educate herself about the Supreme Court, the current makeup of the U.S. Senate or the First Amendment.

… Kentucky could have a senator who thinks the Civil Rights Act was a mistake.

… Colorado could have a senator who thinks date rape is more like buyer’s remorse.

… we could see the rise of a political movement that wants to believe President Obama is a socialist from Kenya.

… and we could be on the road to a country where our next President is more concerned with landing reality shows for herself and her children than she is with standing up for the rights of all women, not just her grizzly mamas.

So when you’re thinking that you’re too busy on November 2nd because you’ve got get yourself to work and home, then run the kids to after-school activities, and get dinner on the table before you allow yourself to collapse on the sofa with that glass of chardonnay and the DVR’d episode of the Mad Men finale, please think about how mad our country could end up being if you don’t make sure you have your say.

The Weary Working Woman!  Or, as others have coined, the Weary Working Mom!

Yeah — I’m weary!  I’m weary of pollsters and analysts who devise shorthand labels for women who happen to be moms because they think we can be boiled down to a simple catch phrase, allowing them to move on to other more important things, like, say, whether Donald Trump is really going to run for President in 2012 or whether some woman candidate is a witch!

As always, since women are the majority of voters, we’re the important group that candidates supposedly want to court, so I can’t quite get my head around the continual effort to define us in such broad strokes, especially when those attempts come from the testosterone-laden corner of the political world.

But the reason some think that we of the WWW or WWM (don’t worry, McMahons we’re not trying to horn in on your market), might be the key this year is because we’re just too darn tired to get to the polls!  Or that maybe we might change our votes because we’ve been soooo impressed with that whole Sarah Palin and the mama grizzlies thing!

You know how we girlz can be so easily distracted from the real issues when there’s news about a Palin or someone offers us “tea!”

I know they tire of calling us soccer moms — that’s so 1990s.  And it’s already been proven that the whole “security mom” label was fairy-tale conveniently adopted by the George W. Bush campaign to scare us into electing him a second time.  Unfortunately, it worked.

But why the labels if you really want to talk about mothers who vote and are politically tuned in?  We’re not so inscrutable, really.  We’re happy to talk any time about the issues important to us, even if all we also want to kick off the heels and have a glass of chardonnay after the kids are in bed.

Yeah, I’m weary about a lot of things, including the pre-teen ‘you-just-don’t-understand-about-my-homework-or-my-life’ meltdown we had this week.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to vote.  If nothing else, making time to get to the polls gives me a break from that other “mom” stuff:

We weary ones will still get out, if for no reason other than to spite those who feel they have to keep coming up with this incessant mom labeling!

I was fine last night, all ready to talk politics on a local DC TV station tonight. Woke up this morning with so many aches and symptoms that it’s going to take every last ounce to actually get to the polls.

But I have a little information (thanks to The Motherhood) for you from our East Coast polling place, from Mr. PunditMom, he of the early bird tendencies! Click on the little button! Go ahead!

Don’t you just love technology?

Off to stand in line and more from the trenches later — fortunately, online, you don’t have to worry about catching my germs.

I’d like to collect as many good and bad voting stories as possible for upcoming posts and I’m willing to give you a chance at some cool swag in exchange!

Leave a detailed comment about your voting experiences — good or bad, early, absentee or Election Day — and I’ll pick one comment at random to receive one of these lovely John McCain = Halloween 365 days a year shirts …

… a copy of The SheSpot, with some interesting information on how marketers AND politicians can get women’s attention and votes, if they really want to try …

… and some cool custom PunditMom trinkets!

Don’t be shy! I want to hear them all, ’cause I know there are some good ones out there! Thanks!

And the winner is Maia at Own the Sidewalk. Thanks for all the great stories!

But that’s OK. Even though I had some serious election year funk at one point that caused me to wonder whether I would vote this year, I always knew I would. I have to — it’s too important. Which is why I’ve made a point of taking my daughter with me to “help” me vote whenever I could, starting from the time that she was in preschool (at our polling place, in addition to the obligatory ‘I voted’ sticker, they always give the kids Mardi Gras beads, too!) as many other moms do, as well.

Plenty of moms know how important sharing this experience is. So much so that the White House Project has launched its Take Our Daughters to the Polls project:

I have a feeling, though, lots of moms have been taking their daughters (and sons) into the voting booth with them, even without this great effort by the White House Project. Daughters younger than these girls in the video are making their way to the polls already. Meg over at Addie Baby blog, doesn’t usually write about politics, but she was adamant this year about taking her toddler with her for early voting:

I voted today because it’s important to me that Addison grow up to have the right to choose what’s best for her body. … I want Addison to grow up in a country that allows two people in love to get married regardless of their gender. … I want my daughter to know that I recognize the need for change in this country. I’m trying my best to be a part of it. That is why I took Addison to the polls today. Some will say that my vote may not matter much where I live, but it’s mine and I wasn’t about to waste it.

My pal Veronica at Viva la Feminista will definitely be taking her kindergartner with her to vote, as she always has, and wrote earlier this year about how politically astute her daughter is at this point, after having taken in the experiences of voting and talking politics in their home:

When I think about the awesome fact that she has an opinion on whether to vote for Barack or Hillary (she wants a tie, she likes them both) AND that she is willing to voice this opinion, I have to be super proud of her. And honestly, I’m pretty proud of us as parents.

Will she ever run for office? I haven’t a clue. But I know that she will grow up knowing that she should always vote and that the first Presidential race that she may recall will have a white woman or a black man on the top of the ticket.

We’re not raising a candidate, we’re raising a citizen.

There’s more to it than the act of voting though, because what does that mean if our daughters don’t grasp the issues that are at stake when one casts a ballot? That’s not a problem for the California family at Randomandodd blog, where a recent topic of family discussion was Proposition 8 and gay marriage:

The girls each had their point of view and each expressed their feelings on the matter with such passion. Keep in mind, my daughters are 10, 11 and 15. Most of the emotional commentary came from the younger ones who were SO pissed to even think that it’s even up for debate. I’ve expressed my feelings on the matter, but I don’t push politics down their throats, because the school has been doing a pretty good job of doing that. I had no idea how much they really knew until a McCain/Palin yard sign went up. You would think that someone was burning a cross on the lawn.

…

“Mom, please don’t let them take the gayness away. If they take the gayness away then Ellen will be sad. I watch her show everyday and she’s happy being gay and if they take that away from her, she will be sad…and we will have to watch a SAD SHOW!”

It warms my political heart that there are so many focused and astute daughters out there. If this keeps up, after they get the ‘I voted’ stickers, we’ll have to start stocking up on a few of these T-shirts. I have a feeling they’ll be coming in handy real soon!

Cross-posted at BlogHer, where PunditMom is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News.