ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 politics president TAG: 9606030008
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: MARIE COCCO NEWSDAY
Before he traded the power suit for the preppy sport coat, before he vowed to topple Fidel Castro, before he went to a speedway and bellowed ``Gentlemen, start your engines,'' Bob Dole talked, briefly, about the gender gap.
He said he was bothered by American women's well-documented and apparently growing distaste for him and his party. He said he had a plan to fix it. If he does, it is the best-kept political secret since Richard Nixon's election-eve plan to end the Vietnam War.
It is a wonder that Dole's feet remain so firmly planted on Mars, when the key to winning the presidency seems to lie in talking to those on Venus. Perhaps he doesn't understand why women prefer President Clinton - the kind of guy you dated in college and then wished you hadn't - by as much as 20 points. So in sisterhood with the millions of women, not a few of them Republican, who are ever-so-politely stewing at this state of affairs, I will spell it out:
It's not our plumbing. It's our pocketbooks.
The eye-popping gender gap - Clinton leads in one poll by as much as 33 points among retired women, 39 percent among union women, 25 percent among Catholic women and 18 percent among professional and suburban women - exists because women's economic lives are fundamentally different from those of men.
Of all the nervous Americans whose collective insecurity is now probed with numbing regularity, women are the most economically anxious, and angry, of all.
Though a majority of women, including those with small children, work outside the home, they have the worst-paying jobs that carry the fewest benefits. As a group, women who work full time, year-round still earn only 76 cents for every dollar a man earns. They are half as likely as men to be covered by a company-sponsored pension, and are considerably less likely to have employer-provided health insurance. About two-thirds of those who would get a raise from an increase in the federal minimum wage are women, many of them the sole breadwinner in their family.
A generation after the birth of the contemporary feminist movement, an old rallying cry remains hauntingly true. ``Most women are one man away from poverty,'' said Barbara Kivimae Krimgold of the Women's Research and Education Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
A single mother who struggles to keep her family out of the welfare office would seem to have little in common with a suburban woman holding down a comfortable, second-income job. But eventually, they will both become like their mothers: More reliant on Medicare and Medicaid, as well as on Social Security, than are men.
The congressional Republican assault on government, particularly federal health-care programs, did more for the gender gap than two decades of controversy over abortion. Besides propelling a surge in Democratic support among elderly women, there has been a hidden backlash among younger women as well. After all, when grandmother's home-health aide is no longer funded, when the disabled child can't have Medicaid pay for a home nurse, it is the woman who must find a way to care for those who are cast out of the safety net.
``We've got to assure people that we're not kicking grandma out of the nursing home,'' lamented Rep. Marge Roukema, R-N.J., who will become the most senior woman in Congress next year.
Like many other Republican women, Roukema is frustrated both at some of her party's policies, and at the way it communicates its ideas. It's a style that, over the course of the long congressional session, has come to resemble the swagger of adolescent boys left too long without supervision.
Roukema and other women who have been around the political block a few times see an opening for Republicans this fall: Economically stressed women, particularly those without a college degree, should be told over and over again that Republican policies will spur growth and improve their lives.
In addition, said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: ``We ought to be stressing education and child care and child-support enforcement as a means to give women a helping hand in the economy.''
But on Thursday, Dole went to Philadelphia, where he criticized Clinton's veto of a bill banning ``partial-birth'' abortions. On Tuesday, Dole said he wants drug testing for welfare mothers. The message is consistent. Women who find themselves in trouble are bad and should be punished.
The messenger is still on Mars.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB