From Seneca Falls to … Sarah Palin?

The apparent excitement coming from some women may well be large enough to determine the outcome of the election, though the election is several weeks away. And Palin, who is untested on the national stage and has received far less media scrutiny than other candidates, could still flame out. Polls are notoriously unreliable and subject to quick fluctuations. Even some top pollsters disagree about what the recent polling means. What is clear is that both sides will be fighting particularly hard for the support of female voters, perhaps as never before. Carly Fiorina, who is advising McCain on economic issues, believes women are "a deciding constituency in this election. They represent 54 percent of the vote, and a great number of them are independent or undecided."

Many Democrats have been puzzled by the sight of Republicans cheering on a working mother of five. As recently as this summer, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 20 percent of Republicans would support a candidate who is the mother of school-age children. In a 2007 Pew survey, 53 percent of Republicans said it was bad for society for mothers of young kids to work outside the home. Only 38 percent of Democrats agreed. This is the extraordinary thing about Palin—Republicans have not necessarily changed their views about working women generally. They just like her. And she can help them win. Instead of being threatened by her candidacy, as happened with Ferraro, more traditional mothers appear to be empowered by Palin. This is her great skill: she works extraordinary hours but appears ordinary, thereby validating all moms and what they do each day—and what they might be capable of. When Democrats question how she can do it, Republicans accuse them of sexism and cry, "Women can do anything," flipping feminist rhetoric about competent, unapologetic working women back in their faces. Palin has exploited what has long been a burden on women in executive office—to prove that they will not be distracted or hindered by domestic responsibilities—to great advantage, seemingly modeling the idea that being a mother is not a liability but a qualification for office: the greatest credential of all.

The debate about what being a mother means has boiled for centuries, most fiercely when women have attempted to exercise their rights as citizens. Throughout the 19th century, suffragists argued that motherhood was an important qualification for political life. They would be more compassionate, and better housekeepers of the state as well as of the hearth. Their opponents argued that they should stay at home, where their skills lay, and not bother with the affairs of state. In 1917, a Southern congressman warned that the vote would disrupt the family and "destroy the home, which is the foundation of the republic."

There was much trepidation when the day finally arrived, nationally, in 1920. Women were triumphant; political parties were nervous about the emergence of a demanding new voting bloc. Twenty states passed laws to allow women to serve on juries; Congress introduced bills to finance children's health care and prenatal education; both parties brought women into their national committees. Republican Warren Harding won the presidency with 60 percent of the popular vote. But the hordes failed to materialize—only one third of women voted (two thirds of men did), and they voted in much the same way as men. Assuming it was because women would simply mimic their husbands, pollsters failed to ask why. Women did not rally behind women's issues, or women candidates. Missouri suffragist Emily Blair said in 1924: "I know of no woman today who has any influence or political power because she is a woman."

This was the great revelation of the 1920s: women do not all think the same. They reason, and vote, as individuals, not as a pack. Nor did women politicians act in concert or always think alike, as Clare Boothe Luce (pictured below), called "Connecticut's gift to the glamour department of Congress," found in 1940. She complained that the media portrayed her disagreements with other women as catfights. It was not until 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan, that distinctions in the political behavior of men and women became clear. That year, the percentage of women voting outnumbered men for the first time. Since then, the idea of a gender gap—how women vote differently from men—has been fiercely contested: strategists have miscalculated it, pollsters have misinterpreted it and political parties have clumsily attempted to capture it. What we do know is this: more women than men say they make up their minds in the last few days of a campaign. Since 1980, women have skewed Democratic. And, until fairly recently, women have been loath to vote for other women—particularly stay-at-home mothers and elderly women. But the moose-shooting, defiant Palin may be changing that. Her gender is an asset —particularly in an election where sexism has been the subject of heated exchanges. When voters are looking for change, freshness and humanity, as women in Western democracies have found for the past 20 years, being a woman, not a conventional male politician, can provide a critical edge.

"Women are seen as outsiders to the political system," says Susan Carroll, professor of political science and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "Whenever voters are eager for change, women candidates fare well." (The clear benefit of the Palin pick for McCain was that it allowed him to cast himself as the real candidate of change.) In 1992, which was called the Year of the Woman, the representation of women in the Senate tripled, and women boosted their numbers in the House of Representatives by nearly 70 percent—from 29 to 48. Women now formed 10 percent of Congress. "That year, voters very much wanted change for a variety of reasons, including a number of scandals in Congress, and there was a 'throw the rascals out' climate," says Carroll. "We had also just had the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings, and TV viewers saw this all-white-male Senate Judiciary Committee passing judgment, and concluded that maybe we need someone different up there. If you want a candidate who embodies change, you look for someone who doesn't look like the traditional officeholder."

When campaigning for senator in 1992, Washington state's Patty Murray capitalized on the fact that she was seen as someone outside the Beltway system. When a state legislator dismissed her as "just a mom in tennis shoes," she adopted it as her slogan. Voters responded, and ignored her lack of national experience. Importantly, she was strongly supported by women—even stay-at-home moms, who at that time were reluctant to support women politicians. Murray credits women, and their response to her personal story, for her success. "A lot of women sent me a check for $5 and said, 'I've never gotten involved before.' It wasn't just that I was a woman— I was talking about issues that were important to them. I was bringing the issues, like health care and economic planning, to the debate."

Despite being a governor—and part of the political system—Palin is seen as an outsider and potential change agent because she is a former beauty queen from Alaska who can field-dress a moose. On the trail, says one McCain adviser, Palin "comes across as an average mom. People see her as someone not of Washington, a working woman who really knows what average people are going through, and in an election about change, that really resonates." She both represents average women and transcends them. She has been compared to the celebrity sharpshooter Annie Oakley (dubbed "Little Sure Shot" by Chief Sitting Bull). She has also been drawn as the latest in the proud lineage of frontier women who shouldered physical work alongside men and were renowned for their strength and courage. It is no coincidence that the Western frontier territories were the first to give women the vote (Wyoming was the first, in 1869, followed two months later by Utah; the territory of Alaska voted in favor in 1913). The West "wasn't as conservative and hidebound as the East," says historian Susan Ware, author of "Beyond Suffrage." Women were so critical to the formation—and good order—of these frontier states, she says, that "it was easier for people in the West to think our women ought to be able to vote, too." The first woman elected to Congress, in 1916, Jeannette Rankin, was from Montana. Ware, an Obama supporter says, "Sarah Palin is our idea of an independent spirit from the West … It's not defiance. It's being sure of yourself."