Encouraged by Women's Response, Clinton Stresses Female Side

Asked in a recent interview whether she worries about a gender gap, Clinton replied: "Well, but it depends on how you look at all the various research that's been done.

"But I think there's a lot of room for growth, and I intend to do as much as I can to grow that," she said, smiling.

As Clinton spoke two days later at GT Solar Inc., a renewable energy firm in Merrimack, N.H., several male audience members shook their heads and refused to clap.

"I didn't see anything alarming," said Jaime Navarro, a financial planning officer, after hearing Clinton speak. But he said he would not support her. "I just think a lot of the agenda she's putting out is very socialistic."

At the next Clinton stop, a town hall meeting in Derry, N.H., Leslie Harrison, 52, said the fact that Clinton is a woman is important as she considers how to vote in the New Hampshire primary. "Men have been making a mess of things for a long time," she said. "A woman would be more sensitive to sending our children off to war."

From the outset of the race, Penn and other Clinton advisers contended that she would gain a potentially decisive advantage from women voters. But her campaign had also forecast an emphasis on national security strength that, while present, has not dominated her candidacy.

In the interview on her campaign bus in Cedar Rapids the other week, Clinton played down the notion that she is favoring one demographic over another. "Well, I think I'm appealing to men, too," she said when asked whether she is appealing explicitly to women.

Pressed again about her effort to reach women specifically, Clinton said: "Well, I am," adding, "because what I experienced on the campaign trail starting in last January or February when I got out there was how strongly how many women and girls feel about this. There was this great outpouring of interest in the campaign and a desire to get involved."

She continued: "I guess I've been doing this long enough [that I can remember] when no campaign would have really done that except as an afterthought . . . it's exciting to see the role that women are playing in this campaign."

During several days of campaigning in Iowa this month, Clinton spoke to women, as a woman, as overtly as she ever has on the stump. When she discussed retirement savings, she put it in context for women, who dip in and out of the workforce more often than men and who rely more heavily on Social Security. She met a server at a Maid-Rite diner -- a single mother who raised two sons working two or three jobs at once -- and instantly the woman's story became a staple of Clinton's stump speech. At one point, she said she had been campaigning for president so long she could have had a baby.

At the Ames rally, Clinton described at length the types of voters who have touched her most on the trail.

Of the women in their 90s who approached her, she said: "When this started happening, I was so touched by it. As I meet them, I remember the woman who said to me, 'I'm 95 years old' as I was shaking her hand. She said, 'I was born before women could vote, but I'm going to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.' " The audience erupted in cheers.

Polling director Jon Cohen in Washington contributed to this report.