Do Women Want a Woman in the White House?

With 328 days to go until the 2008 presidential elections -- and less than a month before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary -- analysis about Hillary Clinton's status as the first female front-runner is heating up in media coverage. Not surprisingly, one area of dissection is Hillary's appeal to women, particularly working women and moms of all ages, ethnicities and household incomes (working and staying home).

The Wall Street Journal argues that female executives are less than supportive of their alpha female peer. "So far, she's doing better among women of more modest means," writes Monica Langley in a front page Weekend Journal piece, Friends of Hillary. Despite the fact that 40 percent of Sen. Clinton's top fund-raisers are women, and high-profile business women such as Diane von Furstenberg, Meg Whitman and Geraldine Laybourne support Clinton, professional women overall seem to be proving a harder sell. "One theory about Sen. Clinton's weaker numbers among professional women is that more-affluent women aren't as worried about health care, child care, the minimum wage and other issues important to nonprofessionals."

Saturday's front page of the Washington Post and the New York Time's Politics Blog delved into Clinton's focus on women in Iowa and her "take your buddy to caucus" events that have included appearances by Clinton's mom, her daughter, Chelsea, childhood friends, and prominent female supporters such as Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Madeleine Albright and Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski. "Our outreach to women has been based from the beginning on a social networking model," Clinton aide Ann Lewis told The Post." You reach out to your friends, your neighbors, the women you see when you drop off your kids at daycare, and your co-workers."

What's your theory? Are women -- working moms, stay-at-home moms, grandmothers, women too young to have even contemplated work/family issues -- more inclined to vote for Hillary because of her gender? If she were a stay-at-home mom turned presidential candidate instead of a long-time working mother, would she have broader or lesser appeal? Does this "social networking" model resonate more strongly within groups of women than men? In other words, do the political opinions of the women at day care, work and in your neighborhood influence your vote?

Full disclosure: I've contributed to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  December 12, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Moms in the News
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