Sheila Cohen and her friend Julie Fagan are sipping coffee on Cohen's screened-in back porch in Madison, Wisconsin, kicking around whether they want to try to repeat their over-the-top success as first-time political fund-raisers. In the world of campaign finance, what they accomplished during the 2004 presidential race -- raising $143,000 for John Kerry in just two months -- was so unexpected that this is a little like having won the U.S. Open the first season you picked up a tennis racket and then mulling over whether you want to keep playing.

Fagan, 53, a doctor who specializes in internal medicine and women's health, describes herself as a "cheap and frugal" person who had never donated to a presidential candidate. Cohen, 68, a freelance writer, had mainly volunteered for such uninspiring tasks as looking up ZIP codes and sealing envelopes. As they grew more passionate about the election, however, they and seven friends met at Cohen's house to discuss getting involved on the money end, where campaigns are won and lost. (In 406 of the 435 Congressional races in 2006, the winners were the candidates who outspent the competition.) "Sheila had wonderful food, like she always does," Fagan remembers, eyeing the cookies that are today's temptation. "We sat around in the family room, brainstorming. You'd like to think that voting is enough, but it isn't."

The straight-to-the-gut fund-raising pitch that Cohen, Fagan, and seven of their friends came up with that first night was: "What's more important to you in the long run: $1,000 or four more years of George Bush?" It worked so well that "I got mostly yeses and almost no push-back," says Fagan, an intent woman who speaks with such conviction that her dangling earrings dance. "I've run school auctions and had to work harder for $30." Despite losing the election, Kerry did win Wisconsin. "We were hoping that the election would be the real reward" for donors, Fagan says with a sigh. But she and Cohen insist it is not the electoral loss that's making them so hesitant about raising money again for 2008: "I hate asking for money," Fagan says. "I hate asking my friends ... I hate to impose my views." So while their accomplishment shows the impact women can have when they do get involved, their ambivalence just as clearly explains why more of us don't.

Shutting Ourselves Out

After the 2004 election, I spent 18 months traveling across the country, listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets, and points of view talk about their political lives for my book If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear. In 20 states, red and blue, women spoke of feeling alienated from both parties, in no small measure because of the outsize role money plays in deciding elections and dictating priorities. As Cohen puts it: "I'm disappointed that money equals power." Anne Marie Scibelli, 40, a Republican stay-home mom in Los Angeles, says some women see political donations as a complete waste: "Women feel passionate about issues, but we're practical. If there's money left over and the woman is writing the check, you can be sure it's not going to the RNC."

Yet there is a chicken-and-egg aspect to this alienation when it causes us to limit our own participation in the political process. Money does buy access to candidates and elected officials, period -- because it's donors who are invited to spend time with them at receptions and breakfasts, barbecues and home parties. At the $100 level, you might get a hot dog and a hearty handclasp; for $1,000, an invitation to schmooze over cocktails. For a five-figure gift, woe unto the event organizer who does not deliver the candidate for some serious listening, bonding, and off-the-record candor. To remain competitive, members of Congress now routinely spend their lunch hours dialing for dollars at party headquarters. And year in and year out, their evening and weekend schedules are dominated by fund-raising events. It's crass, yes, but in politics, you can buy friends.

Women have not come to terms with this reality: Only 27 percent of all individual political donations at the federal level come from women, according to a major new study by the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation. Of the 778 Congressional campaigners the study considered, only 27 raised more than 50 percent of their money from women. Of the 64 Senate races it tracked, none were primarily funded by women. It's true that EMILY's List, which funds pro-choice Democratic women candidates, is the country's largest political action committee. Still, only 23 percent of all money to the PACs tracked by the study came from women. This, despite the fact that women control 51 percent of the personal wealth in this country, write 80 percent of all household checks, and lead the way in philanthropic giving. Yet we often fail to make the connection between political donations and policy decisions -- such as whether those programs we're supporting through all that volunteer work will get government funding. "Women are not putting their money where their politics are," says Ilana Goldman, president of the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation.

Although women are not a monolith, politically or any other way, a majority of women voters consistently say they have specific priorities, notably education and healthcare. "We wonder, why don't we have national healthcare? Why isn't childcare a campaign issue? Well, I know the answer," Goldman says. "It's because we're not voting with our purses." Women often do not look at political donations in the same light that men do -- as part of the cost of doing business. "Women tend to give more carefully and in smaller amounts, because they want to make sure the money is well spent," says Donna Brazile, the political strategist who was Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. "Whereas with men, someone in the business community has asked them to donate, and they know it's about access and all part of networking."

For women, the price of not making those donations has been steep. "If you're a candidate and you've got limited time," Goldman says, "you're going to spend time with people who fund you, and women are not at those tables."

What Hillary's Got to Do with It

In the first quarter of 2007, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential contender with a serious shot at the White House, raised $18.9 million for the primaries; in the second she raised an estimated $21 million -- both healthy sums of money, despite falling short of Illinois Senator Barack Obama's even more jaw-dropping $24.8 million and $31 million. In 2006, Clinton was the top fund-raiser in American politics. And even though she had no serious challenger in her 2006 race, she ran the most expensive Senate campaign in the country, reportedly raising $51.6 million and spending $40.8 million, compared with the $5.8 million raised by her Republican opponent, John Spencer. Clinton's success has been in large part due to her ability to take advantage of her husband's unparalleled network, one that she spent decades helping him build and maintain. Because of this, her operation does not seem to be any more dominated by women donors than his was. But it is no coincidence that Clinton chose longtime aide Patti Solis Doyle, 41, to be her campaign manager: Doyle previously ran Clinton's two major fund-raising operations for last year's Senate campaign, and Clinton clearly values that experience.

Clinton has reportedly asked her top supporters to raise $1 million each -- or 10 times the amount that George W. Bush's Pioneers were asked to raise in 2000. Tenley Carp, a 44-year-old Washington, D.C., lawyer, is not at that level (yet, she says), but she has already helped to bring in nearly $100,000. Carp got involved with the Clinton campaign in 2004 and has substantially changed her views on money in politics since. "I'd never had $1,000 to go to an event before," she says. "But once I did, I came away so impressed." With the help of three friends, Carp raised $25,000 at her first event, a breakfast where Hillary spoke and posed for pictures. Carp doubled the take to $50,000 at her second party, which was held at the senator's home. Asked whether she has a personal fund-raising goal, Carp just laughs. "When I was selling Girl Scout cookies, I sold 55 boxes and everybody else sold 10," she says. "But I was going to keep knocking on doors until they said, 'Okay, girls, turn in the forms.' I didn't put a number on it. I just kept knocking."

Carp calls herself a novice "bundler." Pooling donations is a legal but controversial way to get around the limits on individual contributions to presidential candidates. "Women in the corporate world have understood how important bundling is and joined men in doing it," says Cynthia Darrison, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's former finance director. "But we need to see more women involved at that level if they want to be at the table with the big boys." For years, Darrison has been encouraging women to get past their distaste for money in politics. "It's easy to opt out of the system by saying it's tainted, but that doesn't get you anywhere," she says. "When women don't get involved, they create a vacuum into which others will step, and those others are men."

The Tipping Point

Christine Olson, 50, CEO of Pennsylvania-based S.W. Jack Drilling, is one of the top Republican women donors, giving upward of $100,000 every year to Republican candidates and PACs. She had no idea how different her whole attitude toward political giving really was, she says, until she was asked to become Pennsylvania's committee woman for the Republican National Committee. Olson assumed the women whom she approached for donations would give the way the men always had: freely and repeatedly, as an acknowledged cost of doing business. That's not how it worked. "Either they'd hide behind their partner -- 'Oh, I don't make those decisions' -- or they'd say, 'What will I get out of it?'" she remembers. "Getting women to give was like pulling teeth."

Olson got so tired of being, as she puts it, "an anomaly because I write big checks and I'm not afraid to ask someone for a seven-figure gift" that she started a training program for other women in her party, a program that emphasizes the importance of money, money, and more money. One of the women trained through Olson's program is Ann Wilson, a 41-year-old marketing executive who decided to run for city council in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. What Olson calls the old-boy Republicans did not include Wilson on their slate or in their mailings and, in fact, endorsed her Democratic opponent, a man. As Wilson remembers it, "The minute Christine heard what was going on, she asked me what I needed so I could win. I said $5,000 for TV ads. So she wrote the check, and we were on the air within the week." The spots were a turning point for Wilson's campaign. "Those ads pushed me over the top," Wilson says, "because then I could raise more money" -- about $20,000 in all, four times more than the competition -- "and then I was able to do a mailing. When I beat the mayor, believe me, there was stunned silence in this town for 48 hours." Now the party is talking to her about running for state office.

Whether women raise money or donate it, the act of getting involved brings with it more than dollars; it engages women socially and politically, which is a benefit they mention again and again. Through Olson's training program, Wilson tapped into a network of women who knocked on 4,000 doors for her. "They also made sure my kids' homework got done," Wilson says. "I had my girls out there." This feeling of participation comes into play at any dollar amount. Beth Mewhinney, a counselor in Stephenville, Texas, wrote her first check -- for $10 -- to a political candidate last year, at age 60. Although her candidate lost the race, Mewhinney says she in no way feels she threw that money away and has since donated to other candidates. "Going into the voting booth, I really got the point of the whole process," she says. "I'd met several of the candidates and been part of their campaigns -- donating made all the difference."

That holds true across the political spectrum. Tami Clark, 42, of Kansas City, Kansas, started giving to local Republican candidates five years ago. "I feel like I'm contributing to people who have the same moral values I have," she says. And because of her giving, Clark was invited to the home of Donald J. Hall Sr., the local billionaire who chairs Hallmark Cards, where she met Laura Bush. "Being from Texas, I love George Bush," she says. "It was a huge social thing for me, getting to meet Laura Bush and talking to her." Clark and her husband, a financial adviser for an insurance company, also met President Bush at a dinner in Saint Louis; they consistently give the maximum amount allowable to the party and various Republican candidates.

For many women, the person who inspires them to give for the first time is another woman; in Mewhinney's case, it was Barbara Radnofsky, a Democrat who ran for the Senate against the hard-to-beat incumbent, Kay Bailey Hutchison. According to the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation study, women do give a greater share of their money to female candidates: Overall, women give 30 percent of their donations to women candidates, whereas men give 17 percent of theirs to women. But it's not a given that women prefer women candidates, even within their own party. And in this too Mewhinney is typical: Although she would rather back a woman, she differs with Clinton on the war and has already written two checks to Barack Obama. (Many of Obama's donations have come from small or first-time donors, which means there's plenty more where that came from.) In fact, one tip that the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation includes in a handout for women running for office is, "Gender-based fund-raising appeals have limited resonance with today's women, especially those under 50. ... Women do not want to be guilted into giving."

A Modest Proposal

Paula Hughes, a 51-year-old Boston Democrat who recently started her own olive oil company, Canonica Verde, describes writing checks to candidates in idealistic, even romantic terms. She and her husband, Edward, were among about 90 donors who each gave $2,300 to attend a June fundraiser for Obama at a supporter's home in Weston, Massachusetts, where they stood around the pool out back, chatting with fellow guests Michael and Kitty Dukakis, and enjoying tuna tartare rolls served on a bed of sesame seeds. The atmosphere, Hughes says, was electric: "It was as though we were at the beginning of something, and we were all kids again and all in love again. This was not a sure thing, but we were supporting somebody we believe in."

Hughes grew up in Washington, D.C., and started giving to candidates when she was at the Catholic University of America. "I love to give, because it feels like you have become part of the process and the organization, as invisible as you may be," she says. "Once you make a contribution, it's something you like to talk about. Not the dollar amount, but it puts you out there publicly as a supporter, which is daring, and then people bring you their complaints -- kind of like as an expatriate, people come to you with what they think about the United States. You become an ambassador."

Goldman, of the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation, says that if more women made even a modest investment, policy priorities would shift dramatically. "We did the math," she says, "and even if all the women who voted in the 2002 midterm elections -- so we know they're already interested -- put in just $27, it would have been half of what was raised" in total for the 2006 elections. "Next time, I hope women will take a collective deep breath and step up."

In Madison, Wisconsin, Julie Fagan and Sheila Cohen say that after the primary season, they probably will take that deep breath -- several, actually -- and get involved again. "And I may even raise money," Fagan says. At that, Cohen laughs. "I talk a good game," she says of her distaste for the role money plays in politics, "but I probably will too."

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