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From: pc@hplabsb.UUCP (Patricia Collins)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: woman for VP
Message-ID: <2247@hplabsb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-May-84 20:09:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsb.2247
Posted: Tue May  1 20:09:44 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 4-May-84 00:15:09 EDT
Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA
Lines: 23


	I caught a headline, suggesting that if a woman were nominated
as Vice President, it would cost that party as many male votes
as it would gain in female votes.  The reference was to the Democrats,
who already have a substantially larger fraction of the female votes,
so perhaps the implication is NOT that many men won't vote for a woman
VP, but rather that there are few Republican women and they are unlikely
to switch parties just to vote for a woman.  (Therefore, the few Democratic
men who would vote Republican just to avoid voting for a woman VP
hardly constitute a powerful contingent.)

	Most papers ignore any substantive analysis, and in particular
seem to avoid any treatment of Women's Issues in politics.  The spotty
treatment of the "Gender Gap" identifies the phenomenon but not the
underlying issues.  The ERA received little front page coverage in
newspapers which otherwise seem quite in tune with the public's interests.
Relegating such discussions to the OpEd page or the "features" section
(read: "fluff") has a quite different impact than the legitimacy of
front page coverage.

					Patricia Collins
					hplabs