If He Was A She

Okay unbind your shorts this isn't about one candidate against another. It's about exploring the role that gender plays in this election. Nice insight and some background on how age within gender also plays a role... Bonnie Erbe posts About Race, Gender and Class at US News. It opens with:

Women played interesting roles in last night's Iowa caucuses:
* Younger Democratic women deserted Sen. Hillary Clinton.
* Republican women at some caucuses opened with a prayer, then voted in large percentages for the preacher Mike Huckabee

Erbe goes about what that means and how gender factors into it...

Gender matters still, yet we act as if it is done.

Most of us who led the second wave came out of the civil rights movement. We were inspired by it, learned from it, and led where we could. I celebrate last night for a victory that we also feel, where our nation's troubled history with race, class and gender took an inspired turn for the better. That victory belongs to all of us, but as we celebrate we must remember there is still work to be done by and for women, as we are the group who cross 'all of us' but still don't own 'all of it'.

The race isn't over by a long shot, but the issue of women supporting women is something this campaign can get us to cop to and think about.

Party will always trump gender, issues and values will and always should count first. But if we want to be a fully representative democracy, we have to look at the fact that as much as I celebrate and admire Barack Obama, a woman of his age and stage would not have had the opportunity to make this historic mark in Iowa. She would have been counted out long before she stood up.