Conservatives need women's vote for majority
Vancouver Sun
By: Andrew Mayeda
January 06, 2008

OTTAWA -- … If they hope to win a majority in the next federal election, Harper's Conservatives will need to discover more women….

Recent polls by Ipsos Reid for CanWest News Service show that support for the Conservatives among women trails support among men by a significant margin.

In four polls through Nov. 26, support for the party among men averaged 42 per cent, compared with 33 per cent among women. In the most recent Ipsos poll, released Dec. 22, the gap spiked to 15 percentage points. Forty-three per cent of men said they would vote for the Conservatives, compared with only 28 per cent of women.

"There really seems to be a very strong gender effect in Conservative voting," said Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker.

Canadian women have shown a reluctance to vote Conservative for some time now, notes Bricker. But it was not always so….

Experts attribute this shift to a range of factors, from greater educational opportunities to the ongoing lag in women's wages and a decline in religiosity.

The so-called "modern gender gap" also became apparent in Canada during the 1990s, especially outside Quebec, according to a 2002 study by Lynda Erickson of Simon Fraser University and Brenda O'Neill, now with the University of Calgary. During the '90s, women recoiled from the policies of the Reform Party, a precursor of the Conservative Party, and moved toward the NDP.

Some analysts believe the Conservatives must now do more to address issues traditionally considered important by women.

When it comes to the top issue facing the country, men and women agree: it's the environment….

Beyond that, men and women's priorities diverge. Both genders agree that health care is the second most important issue facing the country, but a much larger 27 per cent of women consider it key, compared with only 18 per cent of men.

Education and poverty ranked as the third and fourth most important issues for women. For men, it was the economy and military defence.

"Women tend to not to be as interested in the big-P political-power issues. For them politics isn't necessarily about the cut and thrust of party politics or big-dollar economics or relationships among states," said Bricker. "They tend to be focused more locally; they tend to be more interested in things that affect them and their families."

But connecting with voters is often a matter of style as much as substance. And pundits say the prime minister's machiavellian manoeuvring and reputation for bullying his opponents don't play well with women….

One of the Harper government's most high-profile decisions regarding women came in fall 2006, when it cut $5 million in administrative funding from Status of Women Canada, an agency that promotes gender equality. Coupled with the cancellation of the Court Challenges Program, which advocates say was an important tool to fight for women's rights, the move sparked outrage among many women's groups.

"Under the radar, Harper has been eliminating funding for women," says Rebick….

Nevertheless, the party's failure to gain traction among women causes some supporters to bristle. "Why are women's votes so uniquely important? Each vote counts one," Tom Flanagan, a University of Calgary professor who was once one of Harper's top aides, said in an e-mail.

But Rebick and other women believe that position misses the point. "They are 52 per cent of the population. It's not that they're more important. It's that they are important, and the Harper government ignores that completely," she said.