Female voters flex their muscle

THE WAY BACK: Third of a three-part series

American women have learned how to roar, and they did it in the November midterm elections.

Young women, single women and “women of color” pulled more levers for Democrats than Republicans in pivotal Senate races. In Virginia, female voters pushed James H. Webb Jr., the Democrat, to a narrow and stunning victory over Sen. George Allen, the Republican, and helped sweep Democrats into the majority in the Senate.

Female voters “cleaned house,” leaders of feminist and liberal groups crowed in a postelection press conference as they welcomed the unprecedented rise of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, to House speaker.

What does it mean for the traditional-values movement if women — the traditional keepers of hearth and home — are leaning more left than right? Which worldview — conservative or progressive — will be adopted by most women in Generations X and Y?

This three-part Washington Times series looks at the future of the traditional-values movement, with special attention to the abortion issue and the role of women.

Traditional-values leaders say that they are confident that they represent most women’s views and values and that future generations of women will also side with them.

“I think women have always been very anchored to reality and acknowledged how important it is to help shape the world that their children are going to grow up in,” says Janice Shaw Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public-policy women’s organization.

“We’re also making good progress with young women,” Mrs. Crouse says. “They can see the collateral damage of the left’s lifestyles. They see all the disasters around them, and they are much more conservative than the boomers were.”

Delivering for Democrats

The 2006 election, however, revealed a strong preference for Democrats among women in key states.

Exit polls cited by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, showed 55 percent of women voted for Mr. Webb in Virginia, 52 percent backed Jon Tester in Montana and 51 percent voted for Claire McCaskill in Missouri.

In Pennsylvania, 61 percent of women voted for Bob Casey, while Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Sherrod Brown of Ohio each received 57 percent of the women’s vote, the center’s spokeswoman says.

Even in the one key Senate race lost by Democrats — in Tennessee — 51 percent of women supported the Democratic candidate, Harold E. Ford Jr.

“I’ve got to say it: Feminists are the majority,” Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal said in March at the Women’s Equality Summit, sponsored by the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO).

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