Obama supporters working the female vote

In South Carolina, they've been looking in beauty parlors; in Southern California, one focus has been on churches. Around the San Francisco Bay Area this week, they planned to start scouring the senior and assisted-living centers.

If you are registered to vote and have ever worn pantyhose, Women for Obama wants you -- and for good reason. In past races for the Democratic presidential nomination, the candidate who has attracted the most women has won.

That's why the Obama campaign started going door to door in California last month, trolling for older female voters. Why a weekly women's phone bank began statewide this month. Why Women of Faith for Obama plans to fill the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles the day after South Carolina's primary.

Why, on the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, simultaneous news conferences in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles underscored Obama's support for abortion rights.

And why Obama surrounded himself with single mothers in San Francisco last week and talked about how the tax code hurts ordinary families and "women in particular."

"And I know this because my mother was a single mom," he said while teacher Kara Dailik, 38, rocked newborn Django in her arms. "My father left when I was 2. And I know what it's like to watch someone juggle trying to go to school, trying to work and trying to raise two kids at the same time with not a lot of help."

That's a reasonable facsimile of Dailik's life, and she was glad to hear about Obama's plans to improve women's lot -- an expanded child tax credit, a better family leave law, more after-school programs, among other things.

Dailik said her affections had been split evenly between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton before she sat down with the senator from Illinois at a Women's Economic Roundtable.

She left the Mission District event closer to 65 to 35, advantage Obama. But the deal still wasn't sealed.

"I feel more aligned with the things I've heard him say and the things I know him to be working for," Dailik said. "And yet, I really want a woman in the White House. This is where I get torn."

She is not the only one, a point that the campaign is well aware of. Obama had a 5-point lead among women in Iowa and went on to victory there. Polls showed that younger, single women gravitated to him in greater numbers, whereas Clinton attracted older female caucusgoers.