Barack Obama has cast women’s decisions about healthcare issues, such as contraception and abortion, together with equal pay for women as a family and economic issue in the second presidential debate on 16 October.

In an appeal to women voters the president pointed out that he and his sister had been raised by a single mother who had put herself through university and that his grandmother, who had only a high school education, had become vice president of a bank even though she had to train men who were promoted above her.

Mitt Romney countered that as governor of Massachusetts he had told his staff to seek qualified women candidates …