Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?[W:29]

Re: Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?

SmokeAndMirrors said:

Stop minimizing the the work of women.

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:roll: no one is minimizing the work of women. Stop using accusations of mean-ole-sexism to cover for a lack of willingness to respond to what people are actually saying.

Men choose not to pursue their education at all more so than women.

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That's right, they do. Not least because (as identified) our education system is broadly set up to reward behaviors females are more skilled in (such as, for example, the ability of 9 year olds to sit still and concentrate for 30-45 minutes at a time) and because adolescent males increasingly lack forced maturation. Broadly speaking, our education system is designed by women, implemented by women, overseen by women, and benefits females. That's not any kind of conspiracy, it's just people doing what they think works best.

Women aren't being coddled into the system. They are choosing to pursue it, whereas men are not.

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:shrug: agreed.

Furthermore, the American style of education hasn't changed over the entire course of our country's history.

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:lol: you may want to check with Fiddy on that. However, I agree that the education system is only part of the problem - the culture is another major problem.

As far as my comments on why Republicans have a hard time courting women, that phrase is a direct quote from an actual Republican politician.

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No it's not, it's a citation of a single state-level legislator who was quoting someone else who wasn't even talking about actual rape, but rather premarital sex. There is more evidence that Democrats are the pro-illegal-gun-running party. But hey, it's hard to gin up outrage in an election year when you keep things in context .

Your second assertion is ridiculous. Women are dramatically more likely to be pro-choice than men.

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On the contrary - Women are significantly more likely to be in favor of limiting abortion than men.

Washington Post-ABC News Poll: 60% of women favor restricting abortion after 20 weeks, compared to 53% of men.

Quinnipiac: 8% of women favor banning abortion in all cases, compared to 6% of men. 60% of women favor allowing unrestricted abortion only up to 20 weeks, compared to 50% of men

I am not defining medical decisions as only abortion -- although it's that too. Republicans seek to limit women's healthcare pretty much across the board.

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Oh. Okay. Where are Republicans seeking to limit women's ability to get open-heart surgery? Hey, in the debate over over-the-counter birth control, which party is arguing in favor of it, v which party is arguing in favor of limiting women's access by forcing them to get a prescription? Where, other than abortion are Republicans trying to limit "women's health care" v arguing for policies that increase individual choice?

The Republican party can't gain the majority of women in ANY demographic, married or unmarried.

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Except, of course, that they consistently do.

It's just that older people vote more, and thus more married women who are Republican show up to the polls.

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1. you get plenty of people who register Democrat (or maintain earlier registrations) and then vote Republican
2. Contra the President, non-voters don't count in a vote.
3. Your argument is partially self defeating given that younger women are also less likely to be married.

If you are going to continue ignoring the evidence directly contrary to your claims, don't bother.

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You cited a single January/May 2009 poll that showed a democrat advantage among married women of 3% above the margin of error against decades of evidence in the opposite direction.

Sure. Okay. And George W Bush has stratospheric approval ratings. Don't believe me? Here's this poll from right after 9/11.

I certainty won't. I just felt it necessary to point out your intentional dodging in owning your insinuations about women's intellects. That kind of dishonesty bugs me.

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:roll: no one is insinuating anything about women's intellects other than YOU bringing in the daddy-bit and ME arguing that women are better at concentrating on school work as children.

Incidentally, you have the parental roles reversed - Republicans are the Daddy Party, Democrats are the Mommy Party.

Re: Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?

I don't see why the OP is being attacked for starting a discussion on how certain demographics vote; that is a legitimate discussion. Of course women don't vote en masse, they are too large of a demographic group to do so. They do however tend to vote democrat more than men, although suburban women probably are one of the more swing-y demographics, due to the middle class nature of suburbia.

Re: Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?

cpwill said:

Broadly speaking, our education system is designed by women, implemented by women, overseen by women, and benefits females. That's not any kind of conspiracy, it's just people doing what they think works best.

:lol: you may want to check with Fiddy on that. However, I agree that the education system is only part of the problem - the culture is another major problem.

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It depends on what one means by "change" in the education system. For instance, it's overwhelmingly clear that pedagogical orientations have shifted dramatically from generation to generation, just as it is clear that demographics of students and duration of study have also significantly changed since the the colonial era on up. Now, if you are perhaps the most radical of progressive educationists, you would describe that the power dynamics as well as the physical space of the classroom itself hasn't had much revision since the early formation of the American public school system or at the very least since American industrialism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you'd have a point. If you were to suggest, however, from a progressive education standpoint that progressivism hadn't affected the American public school system since the early 20th century, that would be a significant exaggeration.

Now, gender dynamics are much much more complicated and are probably not going to satisfy either of you. It'll be a bit hasty of a writing, so don't expect this to be terribly thorough. By the early 20th century, the American public school system was both professionalizing as it was becoming solidly a woman-dominated profession. Coincidentally, understandings of student behavior, intelligence, and so forth were going through a series of revisions. Problem students, as it were, were becoming increasingly concentrated in sex identification. In terms of sheer physical aggression, inattentiveness, and so forth, men were becoming identified as needing to be syphoned into isolated circles away from the rest of the student population. However, at the same time, women, for reasons often involving their sexuality, were becoming problem students and needing of serious reforms and punishments. Now, likewise, in terms of what was expected of women and what was expected of men in terms of academics and life prospects, we have to recall that in a pre-Title IX environment, yes, women were idealized to become the homemaker and if need be, work "suitable for women" (secretarial work, nursing at the bourgeois level...and whatever else if you were not in that grouping). In fact, even in the years immediately proceeding Title IX's passing, I have found that at the state level as well as the curriculum level, there was a significant understanding from entry-level bureaucrats (your teachers) that there was"men's education" and "women's education" ; "men's vocations" and "women's vocations." The former was often more prestigious and producing in material success, while the latter was somewhat directed to lesser qualifications, monetary compensation, and prestige. It was in violation of federal guidelines, but it persisted all the same. This was exacerbated if the student was in special education (in fact, it is not surprising that women can argue that the effect still applies in special education today).

Re: Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?

cpwill said:

:roll: no one is minimizing the work of women. Stop using accusations of mean-ole-sexism to cover for a lack of willingness to respond to what people are actually saying.



That's right, they do. Not least because (as identified) our education system is broadly set up to reward behaviors females are more skilled in (such as, for example, the ability of 9 year olds to sit still and concentrate for 30-45 minutes at a time) and because adolescent males increasingly lack forced maturation. Broadly speaking, our education system is designed by women, implemented by women, overseen by women, and benefits females. That's not any kind of conspiracy, it's just people doing what they think works best.

:lol: you may want to check with Fiddy on that. However, I agree that the education system is only part of the problem - the culture is another major problem.

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Now if you're wanting something about contemporary culture, I can also vouch for some of what CP has to say. The education field and that of the human service field in general, is overwhelmingly dominated by women. Much of this is a continued reflection of cultural femininity and the need to take feminine virtues of motherhood into the public sector (often previously demanded and reinforced by men), but it also carries with it some additional pieces of baggage. Male behavior (especially with certain additional demographic markers) has become increasingly targeted by an education field dominated by women. As in the past, but always shifting and sometimes worsening, student diagnoses of emotional and behavioral disorders carry with them consequences inside the schools that are often unique to the school setting. Men continue to have a disproportionate diagnosis rate and a disproportionate punishment rate in the schools and yes, it has often been established in the research journals for thirty years that gender dynamics play a role. Now, it's also going to be rightly pointed out that as the student ages and student behavior continues to become an issue, it's not as if there's a decline in male figures both at the instructional level and at the administrative level (in fact, the opposite is true, even if a systemic dearth of male professionals is found). Thus, there is rightly going to be a great deal of caution there in making some sort of conclusion that the rising tide of student misbehavior is to be blamed on gender dynamics of instructor/administrator and student. But there is nevertheless something to it. There's also an occasional realization on the behalf of professionals attempting to hire teachers about the need for male role models in the schools due to the dearth of them at all levels and in most subject matters. I can personally speak to that one. Especially for those students who have behavior issues, there's kind of this side dialogue about the fact that there is a gender component not being addressed: that male students will respond better to a male authority figure who can both keep them in line as well as guide them. It's both an emotional comfort thing for the student as well as for some reason or another a difficulty for female authority figures to do correctly. Even in professional settings with other professionals, it does impact the dialogue that is had about education and human service matters. Not night and day sort of things by any means, but it's certainly there.

Now, is this going to explain the vast swaths of male students performing academically worse and achieving less in adulthood? No, not really. I thought the most prominent cases for making the argument that the gender component could explain that much of a gap in the past few decades was an exaggeration. I have no real confidence that if the field was suddenly 47-50% male, we would significantly start to see increases of male performance and post-secondary accomplishments. There's a lot more at work. What, I cannot yet say or completely conjecture. Nevertheless, it's not sheer fiction either.

Re: Are "Suburban American Women" Conservative or Liberal Voters?

SmokeAndMirrors said:

What is your obsession with this topic, dude? How many threads have you made about this? 3 or 4 now?

As has been shown to you numerous times, American women in all demographics lean Democrat.

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Not entirely true.

White American women tend to lean towards the right.

However, the gap is small, and could be closed with the right nominee.