Outline for Victory (II): Women

“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop those talents.”

― John F. Kennedy


Women are more likely to vote than men, making up roughly 52% of the electorate, Women are also 10% more likely to vote Democratic (56% to 38%) than men are to vote Republican (50% to 42%). In the popular vote in 2020, Biden beat Trump by 4.5%; sex differences may account for much of that margin.

Progressives do very well with unmarried women -- a Democratic core group. Abortion is key to locking in that group, largely because Republicans are pro-life, while unmarried women both value control over their bodies and are less likely to want children.

Progressives are the party of government, seeking to hold power through government-financed programs. Unmarried women, less wealthy than their married counterparts, look to government to provide welcomed security. One survey shows unmarried women are 26% more likely to vote Democratic than those married.

If populists are to gain power, they need to make inroads among women who identify primarily by sex and unmarried status. And populists must also appeal to the college educated married women who rejected Republicans in 2018 and 2020 because they personally disliked Donald Trump.

The obvious way for populists to gain female support is with a dynamic, job-creating economy. Recognize that because women concentrate in service industries such as food and accommodations, the pandemic has hit them especially hard. In January, 275,000 women dropped out of the labor force. Also, women were 80% of the U.S. adults who gave up looking for work. Women — 46% of pre-Covid U.S. workers — suffered up to 54% of pandemic job losses.

Covid has offered flexible work opportunities, including freelancing and independent contracting on their own schedules while balancing competing priorities like child care, virtual learning, or caring for aging parents. Against that, however, Democrats have proposed the Protect the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) to help unions place new restrictions on independent contracting.

Jobs the pandemic did not kill, the PRO Act just might.

Conservative Brenda M. Hafera, in her “The Female American Mind” article, goes beyond economics in seeking women’s support. She directly challenges the progressive culture impacting American women today. To Hafera:

  • Equality in America means giving each person ownership of their abilities and the right to exercise them freely. We have different talents and interests, meaning different results will arise from fair competition. Welcome these differences.


  • Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) rightly argued that women should have access to high-powered careers. American women are ambitious explorers, capable of honoring their pioneering forebears.


  • Female American ambition isn’t limited to individual achievement. Serving their children, serving others, women pull hospital shifts or run a household, knowing the dignity of often unglamorous work. Women appreciate the courtesy of recognizing motherhood’s invaluable sacrifices, of caring for others.


  • Many American women seem likely to reject Marxist and French philosophies saying masculinity and femininity are merely cultural constructions. Instead of eliminating differences, put them to use, embrace family division of labor, welcome the active life, volunteering, tending to less fortunate others.

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