Last Sunday, Steve called his folks in Cleveland for their weekly chat. They chatted about work, the house projects, the kids. They also talked about who they were going to vote for in the primary. My father-in-law was planning on voting for Obama; my mother-in-law had chosen Hillary. My mother-in-law is part of Hillary’s core demographic — late middle aged, white women.

In today’s Times, Maureen Dowd refers to Hillary voters, like my mother in law, as shoulder-pad feminists — women who came of age in the era of shoulder pads and still see sexism everywhere. They are ticked off about injustices in their own lives. They relate to Hillary who jokes about her wrinkles. Their hatred of Obama is intensifying as the guy takes the spotlight again. Dowd says that younger women think the old bats are crazy.

I have had my issues with shoulder-pad feminists in the past, but I don’t want to get into our differences today. I want to point out our commonalities.

Yeah, there is sexism out there. It takes a slightly different form than old school sexism, but it’s a huge problem that hasn’t gone away.

While the gender differences aren’t as stark in political science as in the sciences, they are still pretty bad. Our big annual convention is dominated by men. The leading journals prefer quantitative research over qualitative research. And no surprise, men do the quantitative work. The numbers of women with PhDs have increased dramatically over the years, yet the departments at universities are fraternities. Women get the degrees, but not the jobs. Many schools don’t offer family leave time or child-care centers on campus.

Most women don’t experience these forms of soft sexism until later in life. We’re sailing through school work, out pacing men in the classroom. It’s when the hard realities of family and work hit that women get the short end of the stick.

Women are mad. And they are carrying that grudge into the voting booth. Dan Drezner found this great item in Salon that shows where Hillary’s support is coming from.

In January, I discussed women voters and Hillary for Pajamas Media.

Hillary is getting much sympathy from pundits and bloggers
about the image problem that women leaders face. Most women have had
that “shrill and strident” label smacked on their forehead at one point
or another.

They also know what it feels like when the young, handsome,
Harvard-educated golden boys like Barack Obama take home all the
prizes.

Recently, Megan McArdle wrote,

But it’s far from clear to me that in this race, the benefits of being
married to Bill are outweighing the drawbacks of being punished for
things that would pass unnoticed in a man. And it’s pretty damn
frustrating to think that you may lose a job you want because you’ve
got twice the "normal" number of X chromosomes.

Taking a grudge to an empty voting booth may be passive aggressive, but that’s sometimes how we work.

I’m not sure that a vote for Hillary is really a vote for women. After all, she was given the early nod from Democratic party leaders, an old boys’ network. However, this primary season, which has been remarkable for so many reasons, has also shown a light on a low levels of anger in women. That isn’t going to go away after the Democratic convention.