By Gayle White
Cox News Service

CONVENTION COVERAGE

• Bush: 'Pursue your dreams' • Ohio, brace for politicians • Swing voters like speech • Pataki praises 'guts' • Efforts to bring in women • Notes from New York • President Bush's remarks • Video of speech • Convention blog watch • Convention photo gallery • Election special section

NEW YORK - Orange "W Stands for Women" signs, waved by cheering delegates, filled television screens across America as first lady Laura Bush addressed the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.

Like Democrats in July, leaders of the GOP showcased their distaff half.

Outside Madison Square Garden, in swank hotel ballrooms and hip clubs, party activists energized women with workshops, luncheons and networking opportunities.

Now, Republicans will see whether the women back home accept their invitation to the party.

They face a gender gap that has women favoring Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry.

In a trend that began in 1980, women - especially single women - tend to vote for Democrats, men for Republicans. Polls show that this year's electorate is likely to fit the pattern, said Susan Carroll, a political scientist at the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics.

One who bucked the trend is Debra Lyons, 48, a Macon, Ga., engineer and businesswoman who made herself hoarse this week yelling her support from the convention floor.

A speech by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s inspired her to pursue an engineering degree when she was a single mother working as a sales clerk, she said.

"It's amazing how a speech can change a person's life," she said.

She is now a married mother of four with her own technical consulting firm. She became active in politics for the first time during President Bush's 2000 campaign, and supports what she sees as business-friendly Bush administration policies that help women entrepreneurs.

Republicans hope to bring in more like her.

Women, who vote in greater percentages than men, make up about 60 percent of undecided voters and are more likely than men to make up their minds late in the campaign process, Carroll said. A majority of undecided women are single.

Either party could gain ground, but they have to do some serious courting. Half the women in a recent survey by Lifetime Television said neither candidate relates to them and their lives. Among undecided women, fewer than one in 10 said either Bush or Kerry understands women like them.

"This election may well be won by the presidential candidate who does a better job of mobilizing and speaking to the concerns of women voters," Carroll said, "especially those still undecided women voters who will make their decisions between now and Election Day."