Obama Campaign Target: Blue-Collar Women Face Worst Gender Gap

A key battleground demographic for Obama is blue-collar women. By concentrating on the pay equity issue, Obama is going after women who are not only in blue-collar families, but who themselves are blue-collar workers.

Obama should find fertile ground for this message. Except among the highest earners, women with only a high school degrees face the highest gender gaps compared with men at their own education level. That means blue-collar women might be receptive to the gender-equity message.

Note: Calculated from 2000 Census data.

Almost five million women work full-time, year-round in blue collar jobs where the gender pay gap is bigger than the national average of 74% (for median earnings in 2000). That's where you'll find more than a million women working as retail sales workers and cashiers, who earn just 65% and 71% of men's in their fields; half a million production workers and their immediate supervisors, who bring in 70% of their male counterparts' earnings; and so on.

The advances made by women in the 1970s and 1980s were concentrated in those occupations for which educational credentials opened doors (like law, medicine, real estate and administration), and where affirmative actions and political pressure by active professionals created integration and momentum for job equity. Among blue collar workers the gender power has not been as great. Big pay gaps and higher levels of segregation show the result.

If Obama wants to motivate women on pay equity issues, women in blue collar jobs may be ready to hear that message.

Comments

[barackobama4prez]

We should be driving this point home regularly. It's just one catch phrase that will quickly catch on:

HAD ENOUGH YET??????

UP: gas, food, energy, college (list specific stats and examples)

Down: the entire economy is depressed (list specific examples)



Also, Tell the GOP: Either REFORM your campaign or you can't reform Washington.

John McCain and Sarah Palin can't promise us what they won't do in their campaign. That's what we have to judge them on. They pledge to be unifiers and reform washington. Meanwhile #1 & #2 on the GOP ticket are partisan, polarizing, corrupt figures.

FIRE THE GOP!

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008-2016!!!

[SENATORCALLENBOWE]

ALL THE B-GIRLS OF THE CLASS OF THE NEW GENERATION WILL MAKE NOISE FOR THE UNBREAKABLE :)

[takenawalk]

Spend some time making yourself aware of voting fraud and electronic voting systems ;
http://www.freedocumentaries.org/
PROTECT YOUR VOTE !!!! watch HACKING DEMOCRACY

[BluePride]

I believe voting records are the key. What have the repubs supported? This is the Year of Decision.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa-xJPX-ohI

[ully]

the trustable leader just John Mc cain and Sarah...Obama can sit at home watching Tv Oprah show...!!

[ully]

Obama team has money a lot to manipulate media! just beware!! with not much money,John Mc cain will leading and he is the presdient to be!!

[whit4brains]

Mc cain not much money...ully you repeated show your ignor ance on such topics. And if anyone is manipulating the media it would be Mc Cain with his ads, who EVERYONE on this planet with more than 10 brain cells, knows are flat out bald faced L IES!

[mergina]

Perhaps what Obama needs, is a droning liar just like palin helping him get his message across. You know, someone cute, who can lie with a smile, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. A scripted pretty liar, but who?

[Mildmannered]

pay equality is a not a good issue. for one reason, studies have shown that women in most cities outearn men. second, it divides men and women. third, he should be focusing on fostering better jobs for all americans, especially high tech jobs in clean energy.

[allonfla]

Pay equality is an excellent excellent issue because every working woman at some point in their working life have felt underpaid and underappreciated. Also, please pay better attention. How many times has he talked about green collar jobs and creating even more jobs by building up our infrastructure. Americans arent stupid, just very lazy.

[Philip N. Cohen - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for commenting. I'm not giving Obama strategy advice, so what to focus on is not my call, but I can say it's not true that "women in most cities outearn men." There are no major cities in the U.S. where women earn more than men do, whether or not you control statistically for age, race, education, children, etc. (I'm happy to provide references for any of that.)

[BluePride]

The issues couldn't be clearer. It's gotta be underlying racism that prevents his numbers from rising.

2008 IS the Year of Decision.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa-xJPX-ohI

[gladtobebaldwin]

Graphs are a nice way to conceal the truth. Fact is, blue collar female workers are doing quite well, but the industries they are in are predominantly male because of the nature of the jobs and the fact that many of the workers in so called blue collar jobs are illegal immigrants.

Skewed statistics can make anything real. Didn't you learn anything from Reagan's charts?

[NewAmerican]

This is a good issue for Obama.

[Kate4Change]

Way to go Obama! This is a great message. Obama voted for this important Act.

McCain faild to give his vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act 2007 which allows women to claim unlawful employment practice if they are not paid equal to their male colleagues when qualifications are equal.

http://www.themiddleclass.org/bill/lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay-act-2007

This just goes to show that McCain is unwilling to consider women's important issues like equal pay and right to choose.

Obama for Women '08!

[mike42nola]

Women have actually had that right for quite a few years now. This fair pay act of 2007 was really only a meaningless reinforcement of the original law that does not allow employers to discriminate against women in any manner or method including pay.