Saturday, April 22, 2006
New Orleans Times Picayune
Women voters remain major force
By Michelle Krupa
Gordon Russell
and Frank Donze
Staff writers
With so much speculation on the racial breakdown of the electorate in today's primary elections, hardly any attention has been paid to a voter category that is all but certain to turn out lopsided: gender.
Indeed, the scale already has tilted. Even before the polls opened this morning, women comprised a whopping 64 percent of voters who cast ballots in recent weeks at early polling locations or by mail, according to the secretary of state's office.
By Thursday, 13,119 women had voted in the city's first election since Hurricane Katrina, the department reported. Male voters numbered 7,290.
That female majority actually is in line with Louisiana tradition, said Cheron Brylski, a political consultant and former director of the Louisiana Women's Network, a nonprofit group dedicated to educating women about political activism.
Brylski said women traditionally have made up about 60 percent of New Orleans' voters and always have been among the most chronic. Therefore, she said, they would be expected to make the extra effort to vote by mail or at a satellite location.
"I'm not surprised that women come out to a majority," she said. "But to see them come out to be nearly two-thirds, that is incredible."
The exceptional numbers could be attributed to the current makeup of residents living inside city limits, which seems still to be mostly male, said Beth Willinger, executive director of Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University.
"I do think that the reason we're seeing so many women voting absentee is that we're still seeing so many women absent," she said. "Look around. Until schools come back, I think there are a lot of men who are here by themselves."
Willinger also noted the propensity of traditionally male jobs in town, including high-paying construction positions, as well as the dearth of child-care options, for keeping women away.
Despite high early turnout by women, Brylski and Willinger noted that women are remarkably absent at the front of the race for mayor, though several female candidates running for City Council seats appear headed to the runoff.
That could be because voters perceive council jobs as "neighborhood positions," Brylski said. "After Katrina, with security as such an issue, they're not going to feel comfortable with (a mayor) who doesn't look like the man in charge."
Willinger also said that for decades, Louisiana women have preferred to flex their political muscle behind the scenes. They've turned out overwhelmingly at the polls, she said, and also have taken to grass-roots activism, a role asserted recently by the Women of the Storm, the all-female group devoted to pressuring members of Congress to visit the storm zone and see Katrina's havoc firsthand.
"To do this kind of activist, grass-roots kind of thing, they're making a difference," Willinger said. "It's really a faster way of doing it than to run for political office and to try to move mountains."
