One of the nation's best-known Republican women, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, headlined a fundraising luncheon Tuesday as part of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's effort to reach out to women voters.

But outside the event, attended by mostly women and held at the University of Connecticut football stadium at Rentschler Field, a group of female supporters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate John DeStefano said Rell shouldn't be the automatic choice for women.

"I think it's important that women who run for office don't just run because they're women, but actually do something, have a role, play a leadership role," said Mary Glassman, DeStefano's running mate. Both DeStefano and Glassman have accused Rell of not doing enough to tackle key issues such as job creation and health care since becoming governor.

Yet the latest Quinnipiac University Poll, released last week, shows Rell enjoying stronger support among women voters than DeStefano. Rell garnered 65 percent of the female vote, compared with DeStefano's 27 percent. Among men, Rell won the support of 61 percent, compared with DeStefano's 33 percent.

"She actually does do better among women than she does among men, and that is very unusual for a Republican," said poll Director Douglas Schwartz.

Whitman, the former had of the Environmental Protection Agency, said she learned as a Republican governor that it can be difficult for a woman to win over female voters. Whitman said she typically received greater support from men than women, although the gender gap was smaller than for her male GOP counterparts.

"You don't always get their support. Women are harder on other women than we are on men," Whitman said in an interview before the luncheon. "I think it's because women, there are not as many of us out there, so we represent other women in a more personal way. But this year I believe that certainly in this state women have real reason to be proud of their candidate."

Glassman and the DeStefano campaign also criticized Rell for not supporting a bill to require all hospitals, including Catholic ones, to provide emergency contraception for rape victims. When Rell was a legislator, they said, she did not support a 1992 bill that asked employers to post rights concerning sexual harassment and voted against a 1993 bill requiring better representation of women and minorities on state boards and commissions.

Rell said she's proud of her record on women's issues, pointing to her efforts to increase access to mammograms and support legislation that allows women to spend more time in the hospital after receiving a mastectomy.

Despite supporting abortion rights, Rell did not receive a recent endorsement from NARAL Pro-choice Connecticut, an abortion rights advocacy group. Besides her lack of support for the emergency contraception legislation, the group said it was concerned about the voting record of her running mate, former state Rep. Michael Fedele.

Carolyn Treiss, the group's executive director, said Fedele does not have a 100 percent abortion rights voting record. Also, she said, he did not return NARAL's candidate questionnaire for this year's election.

"It concerns us that Governor Rell did not take the issue of women's reproductive freedom into account when selecting a running mate," Treiss said in a recent written statement. "She, of all people, should know the importance of the lieutenant governor's position, not only as the deciding vote in the Senate, but also as the next in the line of succession."

Rell, the former lieutenant governor, took over as governor more than two years ago after former Gov. John G. Rowland resigned amid a corruption scandal.

According to DeStefano's campaign, in 1999, Fedele was one of 57 legislators to support an amendment to a bill that would have made performing a late-term abortion a class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. It did not pass.

Fedele did not talk with reporters before Tuesday's event. But Rell said he does support abortion rights.

"A lot of people feel very strongly on the partial birth abortion, but Mike has always been pro-choice," she said.