Obama: Women are not an interest group

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama speaks at the White House Forum on Women and the Econ­omy Fri­day in the South Court Audi­to­rium of the Eisen­hower Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing on the White House com­plex in Wash­ing­ton. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Haraz N. Ghanbari)

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Fri­day show­ered atten­tion on help­ing women yet warned in the same motion that they should not be reduced to a uni­form polit­i­cal bloc, declar­ing they are not an inter­est group and “shouldn’t be treated that way.”

“When we talk about these issues that pri­marly impact women, we’ve got to real­ize that they are not just women’s issues,” he said at a White House forum on women and the econ­omy. “They are fam­ily issues. They are growth issues. They are issues about Amer­i­can com­petive­ness. They are issues that impact all of us.”

Obama’s com­ments came as women’s con­cerns, and the role women will play in choos­ing the next pres­i­dent, have taken on inten­si­fy­ing impor­tance. Some Democ­rats have accused Repub­li­cans of wag­ing a “war on women” and have turned national con­tro­ver­sies over women’s rights into a vehi­cle for rais­ing cam­paign cash.

The pres­i­dent has not used that phrase. He appealed for a debate that respected the role and needs of women as a dri­ving eco­nomic force.

“There’s been a lot of talk about women and women’s issues lately, as there should be,” Obama said. “But I do think that the con­ver­sa­tion has been over­sim­pli­fied. Women are not some mono­lithic bloc.”

Still, after talk­ing of his com­mit­ment to women in per­sonal and pol­icy terms, he offered the polit­i­cal con­text for his remarks: women and the elec­tion. Women have made up a major­ity of the elec­torate in each pres­i­den­tial year since 1984, and Obama is seek­ing to defend and expand a gen­der gap now work­ing in his favor.

With­out nam­ing Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney, his likely com­peti­tor in the pres­i­den­tial race, Obama warned of the per­ils of giv­ing power to peo­ple who would seek to end cov­er­age for pre­ven­ta­tive care such as mam­mo­grams and con­tra­cep­tion, or slash col­lege aid that dis­pro­por­tion­ally helps young women.

“That’s what’s at stake,” Obama said.

In the 2008 elec­tion, exit polls showed Obama won women by 13 points while split­ting men about evenly with his Repub­li­can oppo­nent, John McCain.

This time around, in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll of vot­ers in 12 swing states, Obama held a lead of 18 per­cent­age points among women.

Nation­wide, the gen­der gap appears smaller, but still yields a double-digit edge for Obama, other polling shows.

The pres­i­dent had plenty of applause lines for the women sur­round­ing him, includ­ing when he pointed out that women hold less than one-fifth of the seats in Congress.

“Is it pos­si­ble that Con­gress will get more done if there were more women in Con­gress?” he said to cheers. “Is that fair to say? I think it’s fair to say.”

The White House is pro­mot­ing its efforts across the gov­ern­ment to help girls, work­ing women and women in their retire­ment, on issues rang­ing from mat­ters of health cov­er­age to salary fair­ness to the pre­ven­tion of domes­tic vio­lence. Obama’s aides point to efforts since the start of his admin­is­tra­tion, not just in this elec­tion year.

The forum focused on the enor­mous chal­lenges that remain, such as the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in fields of sci­ence and technology.

“When cre­ativ­ity is lim­ited or inge­nu­ity is dis­cour­aged,” Obama said, “that hurts all of us.”

Obama said he thinks of the future of his two daugh­ters when he starts work each day and that all of his efforts to help women are per­sonal, as a man who has been shaped by strong women in his life. He said women make up 80 per­cent of his house­hold if you count his mother-in-law — “and I always count my mother-in-law.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.