If you think working women seem cranky these days, here's another way of looking at it: they'd be justified in being a whole lot crankier.

According to the Ask a Working Woman Survey of 2004, members of this group are working harder for less reward and more anxiety than they did six years ago, when the report was first issued.

Nearly half of the employed females 18 and over said that either they or someone in their family has been out work in the last year. Respondents were keenly aware that basic benefits are eroding, that industries with good jobs are shrinking, and that most of the growth is in low-wage jobs lacking such benefits as sick leave, pension or paid vacation. Therefore, finding and keeping a good job was the leading concern across all subgroups.

Some 62 percent of those surveyed contributed between half and all of their household's income. Overwhelmingly, they were worried about the rising costs of health care (92 percent), the increased number of white collar jobs moving overseas (79 percent), overtime pay being eliminated and losing their jobs altogether (71 percent each).

For the vast majority, their workplace afforded no child care assistance (79 percent), no control over their work hours (64 percent) and no paid leave to care for their families (58 percent).

Respondents said they didn't trust corporate America, were strongly in favor of limiting CEO compensation, and wanted more effective laws against job discrimination and in favor of equal pay.

The Ask A Working Woman Survey is sponsored by the AFL-CIO, but its pool of respondents is not skewed toward organized labor. The results are based on a national random sample phone poll of 1,450 working women, conducted by Lake Snell Perry & Associates. This makes it a useful tool for taking the female population's temperature in election years.

One thing the report measures is the gap between women's priorities and those reflected in the current economic and political climates. This year's findings (available at www.aflcio.org) show the gap is a wide one -- wide enough that, if translated into votes, it could spell regime change in Washington.

Just last week, a leaked memo from the Office of Management and Budget warned federal agencies to brace for post-election slashes to all manner of domestic programs -- a direct outgrowth of George W. Bush's budget-busting tax cuts coupled with billions for the war in Iraq.

Many of the cuts would come from programs Bush has been extolling on the campaign trail: Head Start (slashing would be bad for low-income women lacking child-care assistance); nutrition for women, infants and children (bad for those already forced to choose between food and rent as health care eats up more and more of their income); and even homeland security (just to heap some generalized anxiety about red alerts on top of the specific anxieties about job security and retirement).

The memo bears out what critics have been saying all along: Bush's tax cuts were primarily designed for the wealthy, and would force domestic cuts that far outweigh any benefit from lower taxes for about 80 percent of families.

This soak-the-rest approach is hurting men and women alike. But as the primary caretakers of children and the elderly, women have always been especially vulnerable to bad economic policy.

"These are the problems of an unrestrained business community continuing to shave labor costs over several decades, but now more than ever," said Karen Nussbaum, assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "The jobs out there are so stripped down, we're moving backwards, and the diminished expectations are really sad."

There are ways to slow the downward spiral: build labor standards into trade agreements, raise the minimum wage, and -- now here's a revelation -- unionize more workers.

"It's got to come to an end because working families are at the end of their rope," Nussbaum said.

If that rope stretches to the ballot box in November, look out, because cranky people vote.