Opinion

A real women’s issue: pathetic political pandering

The Issue: Women in the national political conventions and how the two major parties are appealing to them.

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Karol Markowicz points out the irony of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s cloying, not to mention insulting, remark that women who spoke at the GOP convention were just “shiny packaging” (“Painful Pandering to Women,” PostOpinion Sept. 4).

Logically, it would appear that women speaking at the Democratic convention are also “shiny packaging,” or would like to be. Does Schultz mean prettier? Or is this once again the “divide and conquer” business?

It can’t be that only Republican women are “shiny packaging” and Democratic women are — what? Gruesome but smarter?

Schultz must have meant that women like Sandra Fluke, as Markowicz also points out, are the new face of Democratic politics. That’s the platform? That’s it?

Steven Wolosker

Manhattan

Markowicz makes excellent points regarding how women are represented by both political parties. It is sadly obvious how they are vying for female voters.

Women who are asked to speak at the conventions represent an endorsement of their party’s positions, not women’s issues. Markowicz expresses the opinion of many who recognize this pandering to “women’s issues” — those tied to sex and reproduction — as the most important topic of the day.

These battles have been fought and won. Women need to move on and unite their voices on real issues facing women today — education, health care, the economy and keeping their children safe.

Some don’t get it and prefer to stick to reproductive issues. That’s their choice, as it is mine to pray for their enlightenment. Joanne Norris

Brooklyn

For centuries, women wanted control over their own bodies, lives and destinies. So many suffragettes subjected themselves to indignities to win us those rights.

Yet Fluke and others like her want to set us back decades to once again become dependent on others to provide us with birth control. Control is the key word.

Why would any women put their bodies back into the hands of someone else? More women are now in poverty, on food stamps or unemployed because of the current administration. Don’t take away someone else’s rights by forcing them to pay for you.D. M. Diana

Greeley, Pa.