Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton: 'Gap within gender'

By Christi Parsons

LOS ANGELES -- Eleanor Fouchey says there's no doubt in her mind that she should support the most viable female candidate ever to seek the presidency.

On the opposite side of the country, Katharine Chin is coming to the exact opposite conclusion about Hillary Clinton. "She's a woman, and that is empowering," said Chin. "But it shouldn't be a factor in my decision."

The two women have a lot in common, including Democratic leanings and an interest in politics. Both have shown up for campaign events in the last few days, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.

But the expanse between them amounts to more than mileage. They represent a gap within the gender gap.

It's evident in voting patterns around the country. Fouchey is 58, and like many other blue-collar women and those over 50, likes Clinton. Chin, a 19-year-old college student, prefers Barack Obama.

Because women account for more than half of all voters, they will be critical to determining each party's nominee, and the next president. This year, women are showing up at Democratic primaries and caucuses in greater numbers than are men -- and voting Democratic more often than Republican.

The divide is intriguing for the patterns it reveals among American women as they are offered, for the first time, a female candidate who could actually crack the highest and hardest of glass ceilings.

"You have all these cross-currents going -- ideology, generation and class," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "There's no doubt there's a gender effect, but it's very complicated."

Older Democratic women tend to like Clinton. Even in Iowa in early January, where Obama was a big winner, women over 50 strongly supported Clinton. Older women supported her again in New Hampshire and Nevada, states where Clinton won with women overall.

To pollster Celinda Lake, that breakdown has an obvious explanation. Clinton is a known quantity, something arguably important to her contemporaries.

"Older women are risk-averse," said Lake, head of Lake Research Partners. "They'll entertain the idea of change, but you have to define exactly what you mean so they can evaluate it."

Women who support Obama are more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 49, polls show, and they're also more likely to be college graduates and to have a household income of greater than $50,000 a year. They're also more likely to describe themselves as "liberal" rather than "moderate" or "conservative."

"Younger women just assume, 'We're not going to make decisions just based on gender,'" said Kate Michelman, who from 1985 to 2004 was president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "We assume we're beyond that. For me, personally, it is part of my feminist ideals and philosophy and goals. I have the wisdom, the ability, to put gender in the mix but not have it be determinative."

Unlike many allies, Michelman, 64, decided not to support Clinton. She backed Democrat John Edwards until he dropped out of the presidential race this week.

Chin shares that viewpoint, if not Michelman's demographic. She is a college student at the University of California, San Diego, where she studies political science.

For months, she was stuck for a candidate, until she read Obama's latest book and formed, "a strong impression of his integrity."

She began volunteering for the campaign. And a couple of days ago, she and three friends drove to Los Angeles to support Obama outside the Democratic debate.

She said she considered both Clinton and Obama strictly on their merits without regard for gender.

"People say, 'She's a woman and you should support her,'" said Chin. "I'd like to think I can look beyond that. I just never think of it that way."

In a sense, Clinton's own generation helped to create this gap. Baby Boomer women challenged glass ceilings at every level, arguably raising it to such heights in some venues that younger women may not even realize it's there. So while older women may be deeply affected by the prospect of a woman president, their younger counterparts appear to be less struck by the potential breakthrough.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, co-founder of the Women's Media Center, thinks gender is still the most restricting force in American life. She notes that Obama is a viable candidate for president even though his elective experience prior to joining the Senate consisted of eight years in the Illinois legislature, and doubts that a similarly situated woman would have the same shot.

The National Organization for Women called it a "betrayal" that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) endorsed Obama. NOW's duty is to "elect, unabashedly, a president that is the first woman after centuries of men who 'know what's best for us,'" the group said in a statement.

Fouchey understands where they're coming from. When she looks at Clinton, she sees a contemporary who has fought to get where she is and bears the scars to prove it.

Never mind that Clinton is a Yale-educated lawyer from a middle-class neighborhood in suburban Chicago, while Fouchey is a retired rail worker in South Carolina.

"She's a role model for me and women like me," said Fouchey, who attended a Clinton town hall meeting in Kingstree, S.C., last week. "She's competent and committed to doing what's right, and she just doesn't let anyone stop her."

That, said Fouchey, "is good enough for me."