A woman’s hand
So the Americans have left their president in office for one more term. On the night just after the elections Barack Obama tweeted a cheerful “Another four years!” to his followers and set a record: the number of times this message was “retweeted” was an all-time high of about 6,000.
Why he won will be a subject of chats for another couple of days. But, in my view, the crucial factor was well in sight of Election Day itself – long lines to polling stations.
Obama managed to mobilize his electorate. There were as many Afro-Americans as in the previous elections, and the Latinos’ turnout was even larger than four years ago. The young were also active. By contrast, Mitt Romney’s electorate – white Americans – was only 73 percent of those who had turned out in 2008.
There was another important electoral segment that opted for Obama – women.
They, women, account for 53 percent of all the American voters.
Most of them voted for Obama – 10 percent more than for Romney.
It is a very active and persistent segment, also in terms of organization.
This time the Ukrainian parliamentary and the US presidential elections almost coincided in time, which prompts me to draw a comparison.
What catches my eye in both cases is that there were a lot of middle-aged and elderly women in local electoral commissions.
I know that international observers in Ukraine wanted to know about the gender ratio in electoral commissions – there was even an item to this effect in their questionnaires, for they sought to see gender inequality here.
And they saw it. District electoral commissions almost entirely consisted of women. Men were recruited for the sole purpose of carrying heavy ballot boxes, fetching documentation, and standing by the door – they were kept at bay from the intellectual side of the matter.
A right thing to do…
For if you entrust a male to count ballots and draw up reports, the Central Electoral Commission will be busy perusing the latter until the next elections.
No wonder the online report of the recount of votes at the scandalous 223rd constituency shows that a woman is counting, while a man is only fetching her ballots. For, otherwise, he would have surely bungled the job.
The Americans are not more stupid than we are.
They also entrust important things to women, such as raising, feeding, dressing and bringing us up, weaning us from bad habits, teaching us to choose a daughter-in-law for themselves and a successful career for us.
And, what is more, it is women who are entrusted to organize the expression of popular will, when we elect new or old, worthy or not so worthy, eloquent or not so eloquent, and successful political leaders – men, of course.
