The women’s vote is no lock for Clinton

Pauline McCloskey, 84, and Caitlin Zadek, 20, may be separated by six decades, but both profess a devotion to the ideal of gender equality -- the bedrock goal of the modern feminist movement. Yet in contemplating the Democratic presidential nomination contest, they have come to different conclusions.

For McCloskey, a retired secretary at a girdle factory here, a woman’s rise to the White House is reason enough to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For Zadek, a University of Delaware English major, the progress women have already made in American society frees her to support a more-inspiring Barack Obama.

Their split reflects a spirited national dialogue underway as women decide whether to send history’s first viable female candidate to the White House.

Polls show women tend to favor Clinton -- a gender bias her campaign strategists are counting on. But Obama cut into that support in two of four early-voting states. Older women lean toward Clinton, younger ones toward Obama. Working women favor him, those with children at home like her. And then there is the factor of race, which helped Obama garner 54% of the female vote in South Carolina last week, with 78% support among black women.

Women carry a lifetime of slights, struggles and achievements into the voting booth, sometimes with unexpected results. How those experiences might influence the election could be heard in conversations with more than two dozen women one rainy afternoon, days before Delaware and more than 20 other states vote in Tuesday’s primaries.

“It’s about time we support a woman for president,” McCloskey said over a hot lunch at the Modern Maturity senior center, a few blocks from the Playtex girdle factory where she hired on in 1944, after the young man she was to marry disappeared at Pearl Harbor.

While Clinton’s generation of women was spouting fiery feminist rhetoric, burning their bras and plotting their careers, McCloskey sat with her steno pad, taking hours of dictation for the men who oversaw production of a nation’s worth of ladies’ undergarments.

The men’s salaries went steadily up; hers stagnated. About the only perk afforded the Playtex working girls was a company discount, and McCloskey dutifully wore her 18-hour girdle, though at 5-foot-9 and 125 pounds, she hardly needed one.

After living and working through an era that marked a revolution in gender relations, she can’t wait to back Clinton for president. A lifelong Democrat, McCloskey would even support a political opposite -- Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- so long as a qualified woman gets to take the helm.

“I think it would lift women up. It would be easier for them to get promoted,” she said of a political possibility she didn’t think she would live to see.

“I’d only hoped.”

Over in Newark, about 30 miles from the old Playtex plant, Zadek shares a house near her college campus with five roommates.

A junior, she has only heard stories about the experiences McCloskey lived, an age in which women could become teachers, nurses and secretaries but never occupy a corner office -- much less the Oval one. But in Zadek’s view, the tremendous strides toward gender equality made by her mother’s generation mean she can vote for a man rather than a woman and still be a good feminist.

That’s why there is an Obama poster in her bedroom window, an Obama calendar on her wall and two of his books prominently displayed on her shelf.

“I was not initially attracted to Hillary. I was never really interested in politics,” Zadek said of her unlikely plunge into the campaign after she read Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.”

“I just realized this guy has come from so many interesting places. After everything that’s happening in American politics, he’s a fresh face, he’s new, his message of unity is so clear.”

McCloskey and Zadek represent the generational divide among women in this election, but age is only one factor on the table as they consider a historic choice.

In the small library at the senior center, seven women gathered to talk politics. Like McCloskey, most had felt the frustration of sexism -- male jocks promoted over more qualified female teachers was just one example -- but most had landed in Obama’s corner.

Their reasons: They felt inspired by a candidate for the first time in decades, and they were ready for a new name in American politics.

“The Bush and Clinton dynasty has gone on too long,” Marianne Schap, 63, a divorced mother of six, said, breathless as she pulled over chairs for women eager to join the discussion. She was never moved to volunteer on a campaign until now. “Obama is sincere. He looks you right in the eye.”

Phyllis Levitt, 72, listened quietly before professing her admiration for Clinton. Gender had nothing to do with it -- she backed Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware until he dropped out. It was Clinton’s intellect, and the way she weathered a humiliating marital crisis to keep her family together that impressed Levitt, a retired English teacher. “If it’s going to be Obama, she deserves to go on a little further, so she doesn’t feel like she failed.”

The historic firsts that have prompted record turnouts in this Democratic race have ignited voter interest even at the University of Delaware, rated the fourth most politically apathetic campus in the country last year by the Princeton Review.

As students spilled out onto Main Street looking for happy hour cheap eats, few women were without a political opinion. None of them had yet experienced sexism directly, unless you count the ones whose brothers were never required to do the dishes.

But on the cusp of leaving college for the working world, several feared they would not be taken as seriously as men and would earn less pay for the same work.

“Isn’t it 77 cents on the dollar?” asked Renee Legare, 21, a senior majoring in psychology and sociology, with a minor in women’s studies.

Legare saw Clinton as a possible remedy for the stubborn vestiges of gender bias. “It’s empowering for women. It’s needed. She has had to overcome more than other candidates, dealing with stereotypes. She has had to be strong.”

But others suspected Clinton would wind up another victim of sexism, unable to command the respect a man would even in the most powerful job in the world. And with a costly war, global warming and the terrorist threat, they felt this was no time to find out.

“I like Hillary, but I don’t think it’s the right time. People would give her a rough time. She got shot down in the healthcare plan,” said Kimberly Mesceda, 22, an English major, recalling Clinton’s attempt at universal healthcare as first lady. “Many people say we are equal, but they still don’t act that way.”

“I don’t feel like I’m ready for a woman in office,” agreed Katie Ayash, 21, a would-be opera singer. “And I don’t think the rest of the world is, either.”

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faye.fiore@latimes.com