Newsweek’s cover article this week talks about women voters through the ages and the effects of women politicians—particularly Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin. The situation and seeming national obsession that we are seeing today over Sarah Palin was seen twenty-four years ago when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated as the first female vice-presidential candidate of a major party. Although her party’s campaign ultimately proved to be very unsuccessful, the views of women in politics have changed drastically in twenty-four years. At the time of Ferraro’s campaign, stay-at-home moms were absolutely horrified by her run for vice-president. But with the nomination of Sarah Palin, the attitudes of women around the country have dramatically changed. Sarah Palin has rallied women across the country, improving John McCain’s lead among white females from 5% to 16% in just a few short weeks. By comparison, after Ferraro joined Mondale’s ticket, Reagan had 10% more women vote for him in the 1984 election than the 1980 election. In a recent poll, only twenty percent of Republicans said they would support a mother with school age kids as a candidate.
Newsweek calls the change in female voters’ mindsets the “Palin Effect.” She has energized the Republican base with Republican female voters rallying behind the rights of women. One reason behind the Republican change could be that the Republicans “just like her.” If one talks about the “Palin Effect,” they should also address the fact that the “Clinton Effect” helped in some ways to bring about this change of female opinions. After all, it was Hillary Clinton who rallied female voters all over the country and helped to promote women’s rights. These two women together show what many of the women of this country want: respect. They want to have equal positions and be able to run for office without the media being critical of how they could handle their families and their jobs. They state the media’s questions of how Palin can be a mom and a vice-president successfully are not asked of men running for such position and question whether some form of sexism exists in this race.
Whether the media is sexist or not will not be the key to this election. History has shown that the “issues of policy could still trump the politics of identity.” While some pro-Hillary Democrats are now backing Palin, the majority of them are examining policies and noticing the radically different beliefs and politics between the two candidates. Make no mistake, Sarah Palin might be able to rally the women voters and energize her party about the election, but the issues of this campaign will still be the policies held by the candidates.