“Women are not an interest group”: The Issue of Women’s Issues in the 2012 Presidential Campaign

The prominence of so-called “women’s issues” in the 2012 Presidential Election is part of a longstanding trend of candidates paying superficial attention to issues that might turn out female voters, in lieu of addressing structural gender inequality in more a substantive fashion. I show how both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama talked about women’s issues in different ways so as to appeal to female (and male) voters, while deflecting attention from a more serious critique of gendered oppression and neoliberal values. Feminists should be wary of these appeals to women, and instead push politicians to substantively address structural gendered oppression.