Sarah Haskins Casts Her 'Lady' Vote

A dose of Sarah Haskins might be good for you.

Sarah Haskins talks politics on Current TV.

Sarah Haskins doesn't like the way lots of companies and politicians speak to women.

In fact, she's so unhappy about it that she contributes a regular segment about it — "Target: Women" — on Current TV's InfoMania.

She points out the ham-fisted and condescending approaches she sees everywhere. They include lumping women together into one group — which assumes that all women have similar outlooks — and reinforcing the notion that men and women always have different concerns.

In politics, people focus on the female vote, or — the "lady" vote — as a monolithic bloc.

She says that the Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton exposed all sorts of misconceptions about women voters, and that things aren't getting any better as Obama and John McCain try to appeal to women through cable television shows like "Army Wives."

Haskins says women are frequently put into uncomfortable positions in marketing meetings, when men turn to them and ask them for their opinions as indications of what all women think.

In the end, she says, marketers don't really think about what message they're sending, anyway. Their feeling is, she says, "You can't just apply the phrase 'You go, girl' across the board."