What is a "woman's issue," when it comes to state and national politics?

I have watched in astonishment as the Democrats, over the past 20 months, have systematically thrown away what has in our lifetime been their primary treasure: that is to say, the women's vote.

Presidents Clinton and Obama won solely due to the advantage that the DNC has held, for decades, with one demographic: white suburban women — and especially, the white college-educated suburban women who traditionally vote over 80 per cent for Democrats. The advantage this gave President Clinton was a gender gap in his favor of up to 11%. [https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/ggpresvote.pdf]

That shrunk to 6% for President Obama, in some metrics, but it still made the difference in electing him. [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/a-closer-look-at-the-gender-gap-in-presidential-voting/]

No matter how many ways you do the math, Democrats simply cannot win a national or state election without this population's support.

Yet they are enacting policies and producing messaging that burn up that advantage. And indeed this demographic is abandoning the DNC ship.

My own specialty, as a former political consultant, was in advising the Democrats how to appeal to, and formulate policies for, this crucial demographic. For a number of reasons — the fact that pollsters, consultants and candidates, were mostly men in their 50s and 60s — both parties tended (and still tend) to be tone-deaf about "women's issues", except for those issues that hit even the most entrenched patriarchal dinosaur over the head, such as "pay equity," rape and domestic violence, and abortion rights.