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Book Tour: The Feminized Majority by Katherine Adam & Charles Derber

Today we offer up a sneak peak into this exciting and timely book.

The Feminized Majory
by Katherine Adam & Charles Derber

Synopsis

Building beyond Lakoff’s election-year best-seller, Don’t Think of an Elephant, this new book shows how the values of American voters are dramatically shifting. With the arrival of the 2008 election year, a rising feminized majority’—made up of both women and men—is emerging as the pivotal force in American politics. Emerging trends show these values are broadly progressive and address not just the needs of women but the general interests of society. They are held by women substantially more than by men but have become the values held by a majority of all voters, including millions of men.

Like earlier eras in American history, such as the New Deal, the rise of the feminized majority today presents an opportunity for the Democrats to become the governing party for decades to come. Looking beyond the 2008 election, Adam and Derber describe a new political strategy that targets the feminized base and opens up a window for major social justice movements to make progressive change.

Like Lakoff’s, this striking new book—perfectly timed for election year 2008—offers a new vocabulary for every citizen who wants to understand (and reimagine) American politics. It will intrigue and provoke readers, stirring new conversation among progressives and new insights for every citizen interested in politics, morality, religion, values, and social justice.
• Reveals the “Three Hillaries” and why two of her three political dimensions consist of masculinized values.
• Shows why Obama and Edwards are more “feminized” than Hillary Clinton
• Builds beyond Lakoff’s Elephant in showing how gender is increasingly pivotal in political values, and by revealing the deep historical roots of gendered values in America
• Looks at the relation between religion, values, and politics in a new way
• A book perfectly timed for the first election in which a woman, Hillary Clinton, stands a strong chance of becoming president
• Written by a widely experienced political campaigner and a noted social critic
• Shows how political discussions have been gender-blind and how gender awareness opens new windows to social justice in America.

Excerpt

Gender, Values, and the Democrats

As the only group targeted by a political party using a value-based strategy, evangelicals are seen as the only people who match their actions and politics to their values. Values, however, are a universal human phenomenon. In their simplest form, values are socially constructed views about how the world should be. In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote about the subjectivity of values and how we shape our values to fit our ideas of what makes a perfect society.

But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that it is which he for his part calleth “good”; and the object of his contempt “vile” and “inconsiderable.” For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them. There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of Good or Evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.7

Looking past Hobbes’s notorious pessimism about the human condition, this idea highlights that everyone acts on values and that values are socially constructed. Therefore, values vary from person to person, and a person has the ability to change his or her values.

Although Hobbes refers to an individual’s values, his message translates to larger community values. Americans, for example, hold American values. Every political candidate, on the right or the left, knows that most Americans respond favorably to the idea that a person should be rewarded for hard work. This is a capitalist, American value. Members of other societies might feel that a person should be rewarded for his or her skin color or family bloodline. Every person is socialized into the values of his or her community or nation, and these values then intersect with other values the person has, such as those based his or her religion, race, and socioeconomic class.

Perhaps the most important set of socialized values, however, is based on a person’s gender. We term these values feminized values and masculinized values. In this book, we will outline how men’s and women’s different value systems create divergent views about what America should be. We argue that Americans carry gendered attitudes into the voting booth and, like the evangelicals, vote based on how these values translate to specific political issues.

Just as some groups’ values fall to the more conservative end of the political spectrum, other groups’ values fall to the left. Evangelicals usually support right-wing candidates, because their moral values are highly conservative. We will introduce a group of voters whose values reflect progressive ideals: feminized values voters. If evangelicals represent the key to Republican electoral victory, then feminized values voters represent the chance for Democrats to usher in a new progressive era.

Feminized values are the values into which women are socialized; a majority of women hold these values, as do a smaller percentage of men, for reasons we will describe shortly. The potential for a more progressive era arises because the women and men who hold feminized values make up today a majority of the country and of voters.

We term feminized values voters the feminized majority. These women and men will not only change election outcomes, but also will transform American values and the American Dream. The feminized majority supports a strong welfare state, views social issues through a lens of egalitarianism, and feels that government should do more in general to help its most vulnerable citizens. Feminized majority voters support stem cell research, comprehensive sex education, and environmental protection. They reject violent imperialism. They worry about their long-term economic security and fear that neither party will provide them with adequate health care. In a much deeper and richer way than American masculinized voters, the feminized majority yearns for a progressive, populist America.

We call these voters the feminized majority because the values they carry truly are becoming majoritarian. We will describe the political and economic changes that have led to this point. It is important to remember that President Bush changed the 2004 election by mobilizing evangelicals, who represent only 23 percent of voters. Now, Democrats have the opportunity to change America in dramatic ways with the support of a much larger part of the electorate. While the general perception is that the United States is a conservative country, we shall show that feminized values are held by an increasingly robust majority of voters in the country who are prepared to support a progressive politics of social justice.

The Democrats can lead the feminized majority if they are willing to abandon their triangulation strategy and create a values-based platform. This approach seems unorthodox, because we usually conflate values and morals with religion and conservatism. However, values are nothing more than socially constructed ideals that provide a moral compass for each person, regardless of where he or she falls on the political spectrum. Once Democrats recognize the power of values in elections, they can begin appealing to values voters.