Feminine Spirits

"I think it is fairly obvious," Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in 1940, "that women have voted on most questions as individuals and not as a group, in much the same way that men do, and that they are influenced by their environment and their experience and background just as men are." Eighty-five years later, it seems many in this country have not absorbed Roosevelt’s lesson. The idea that women would turn out en masse for Kamala Harris because of her position on abortion or subsidized child care turned out to be nothing more than a fever dream of the pink-hat wearing crowd. Roosevelt’s observation—which is reported in Gioia Diliberto’s lively new history Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition—should not be interpreted to mean that there is nothing about being a woman that informs one’s vote. As she mentions, "experience" matters. But it’s not the only thing, and being a woman may inform votes in ways that are not easily predictable.

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