Women's Issues
Ruth Mandel of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University pointed out, "The first image here was: This is a woman who is a wife and a mother, and let us tell you about her family.... If they want the country to see her in a different way, and if they want the children and the family to be off-limits, they have to reframe it. You can’t have it both ways." President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Kim Gandy offered, "The fact that Palin is a mother of five who has a 4-month-old baby, a woman who is juggling work and family responsibilities, will speak to many women. But will Palin speak FOR women? Based on her record and her stated positions, the answer is clearly No."
On September 16, 2008, NOW gave its endorsement in the Presidential race to Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden. The Independent reports, "The feminist organisation almost never supports a presidential candidate, but the Alaska governor's Christian fundamentalist faith and her opposition to abortion rights has forced its hand." Gandy explained, "as the chair of NOW's Political Action Committee, I am frequently asked whether NOW supports women candidates just because they are women. This gives me an opportunity to once again answer that question with an emphatic 'No.' We recognize the importance of having women's rights supporters at every level but, like Sarah Palin, not every woman supports women's rights". The neo-conservative magazine the Weekly Standard responded, "the old-fashioned feminists have fallen back on the old theme of false consciousness; that women who don't agree with them aren't really women at all."
Read more about this topic: Public Image Of Sarah Palin, Perceptions of Palin's Political Positions
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