It was no accident that the six Democratic Wisconsin Senate Recall Campaigns of 2011 included five women candidates. Although only one in five elected officials in Wisconsin are women, women make up half of all Wisconsin voters (in a bad year). Women have been disproportionately harmed by Gov. Scott Walker's regime, and we are going to be a decisive force in 2012.
Walker, we are going to bring you down. (More after the arabesque.)
Wisconsin women are a unique group, and we've been speaking our minds since long before lawyer Belle Case (first woman graduate of the UW Law School, Class of 1885) began collaborating with her more famous husband, the progressive champion Fighting Bob LaFollette. We are hardworking and independent - Wisconsin women are more likely to be in the paid workforce than women in any other state, and working moms are the norm here:
According to the US Census Bureau, 75% of women in Wisconsin between the ages of 20 and 60 (versus 77% of men) were employed in 2009—well above the national average of 67% of women. Among Wisconsin women with children under age six, 71% were employed in the labor force, compared to 60% nationally.
Although women are not well-represented among elected officials, women make up the majority of state and local government employees, one of the first groups targeted by the Walker regime. And women are more likely than men to be heading a household in poverty - the group most vulnerable to recent cuts to school programs, available health care, and reproductive rights. (HT to NY brit expat’s excellent diary about the effect of austerity measures on women in the UK and Europe, which could have been written about women in Wisconsin.)
Two recent bills - introduced in the recent legislative "special session" allegedly about jobs - illustrate the continued war against Wisconsin women. The first is Senate Bill 92, which prohibits insurance companies that participate in a future health care exchange from covering abortions, even if this insurance is paid for with a woman’s own money. The second is Senate Bill 237, which eviscerates the Healthy Youth Act by allowing school districts to offer “abstinence only” sex education (and requiring the state to apply for abstinence-only funds), allows schools to distribute medically inaccurate information to students, and prohibits health care providers from participating in sex ed classes. As if this weren't enough, there are plans to bring the failed Mississippi “personhood” amendment to Wisconsin. This would essentially outlaw all abortions and many forms of birth control.
Walker claims in commercials and a state-funded webside that "It's Working!" but we are not fooled. Scott Walker won Wisconsin women by a slim margin of 3% in 2010. Women in Wisconsin went 56% for Obama in 2008. In July of 2010, Wisconsin women still approved of Obama's performance, but already more than 60% disapproved of Walker. (Compare this to men, 54% of whom favor Walker.)
Polls have consistently shown that Wisconsinites are evenly divided in their approval for the recall of Gov. Walker. But what the polls also show is that women favor recalling Walker by 20%.
In every presidential year, women turn out to vote in greater numbers than men. Will this make a difference to a 2012 recall election? Voter turnout was high for the Senate recall elections this summer - almost to the level of a presidential year. Although the recent Voter ID laws disproportionately affect women's right to vote, there is reason to believe this will not be enough to save Scott Walker.
Abigail Adams once told her husband John to "remember the ladies." To quote one of my favorite protest signs, "Scott, you don't remember me, but I recall you!"