HUDSON, Wis. — Republican John McCain told a mostly female audience yesterday that his plans to cut income, business and estate taxes would help women while Democrat Barack Obama's proposals would only erect new economic obstacles for them.

A day after Obama devoted a day of campaigning to women's issues, McCain did the same.

He told several hundred women in western Wisconsin that his tax-cut plans would be particularly helpful to women because so many of them own or work for small businesses.

"Yesterday in New York, Senator Obama went on at great length about how much he cares about women's issues," McCain said at a town-hall forum in Hudson, where women vastly outnumbered men. "I believe him. But when you cut through all the smooth rhetoric, Senator Obama's policies would make it harder for women to start new businesses, harder for women to create or find new jobs, harder for women to manage the family budget, and harder for women and their families to meet their tax burden."

Obama's campaign disputed the claims and noted that McCain opposed a Senate measure to lengthen the time that workers have to file pay discrimination lawsuits, a priority for some women's groups.

McCain told the audience that he has a record of supporting equal pay for women. He later told reporters he opposed the Senate bill because he didn't want "open-ended litigation by trial lawyers."

Republicans believe McCain has a chance to pick up Democratic and independent women who are angry or disappointed that Hillary Rodham Clinton lost her bid to become the first female president. But the Hudson event seemed geared to hard-core conservatives.

A woman drew loud cheers and applause when she told McCain: "The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left they're almost falling off of the planet. Will you hammer away at their socialist, Marxist philosophy?"

When the cheering finally died down, McCain revived it by answering, "Yes."