Women are the most powerful force reshaping the future of
America. Stronger than political parties, mightier than
religious differences, able to leap cultural schisms in a
single bound, women are quietly exerting a unified power to
make changes in our culture and in commerce, meeting in the
middle to achieve their goals. But they're not using
traditional means such as getting together and voting or
banging on closed doors to demand equal access. In
virtually every arena where American women are causing a
sea change, they are bypassing the traditional settings
that ignore their needs and are creating parallel circuits,
which, in turn, then affect the old standards. Across
political, religious, racial, and class differences, this
new, vital, female center is heralding the most significant
change in American culture in the past century.
Two of the hottest trend-spotters in America -- Celinda
Lake, a leading political strategist for the Democratic
party and one of the nation's foremost experts on electing
women candidates, and Kellyanne Conway, a leading
conservative pollster and president and CEO of The Polling
Company, INC.™ -- themselves cross the aisle to reveal the
ways in which a newly defined, united power base among
women is reshaping the state of our nation much more than
the two-sided politics of Left and Right. Using the eye-
opening results of interviews, focus groups, and polls
(three of which were created especially for this book) that
they've conducted, Conway and Lake demonstrate how women
are getting what they want and need by rejecting outdated
traditions and expectations that no longer fit their
reality. They are breaking the old rules about when and
whether to marry and have children, living fully and
equally as singles, and creating flexible, inclusive
workplaces that don't sacrifice family or sanity. They are
taking charge of the marketplace, controlling $5 trillion
annually as the primary purchasers of homes, cars,
appliances, and electronics. They are making their mark at
ages twenty, forty, sixty, and beyond, drawing strength,
inspiration, and intellectual stimulation from other women.
And that's just the beginning. In this smart, exhilarating
book, Conway and Lake -- who often fall on opposite sides
of the country's most polarizing debates -- come together
to seek out what women buy, what they believe, how they
work, how they live, what they care about, what they fear,
and what they really want. By delving beneath the
radioactive, hot-button issues, Lake and Conway discovered
common causes with which women are inventing a new age of
opportunity -- doing it their way and, in the process,
improving life for all Americans.