As a field of conservative women swept recent elections across America, liberal feminists find themselves trapped by the success of equality for women -- women very much unlike themselves.-- From "Women candidates showcase new vision of feminism" by Karen Heller, Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist 6/16/10
This year, Republicans are fielding a healthy roster of women running for higher office. That's some measure of success, even if this wasn't what the movement's founders envisioned.
[Sarah] Palin has, as others have noted, repeatedly "dropped the F-bomb" - feminism. In a May speech to the Susan B. Anthony List, the right's response to Emily's List, Palin invoked "an emerging, conservative, feminist agenda," rattling old-school activists with her unwavering opposition to abortion rights, a bedrock of the conservative movement since its infancy in the 1970s.
Critics are livid, but this large field of female GOP candidates challenges the assumption that feminism only finds adherents on the left.
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From "No Mystique About Feminism" by Ross Douthat, New York Times 6/13/10
When historians set out to date the moment when the women’s movement of the 1970s officially consolidated its gains, they could do worse than settle on last Tuesday’s primaries.
It was a day when most of the major races featured female candidates, and all the major female candidates won. . . . Conservative Republicans endorsed by Sarah Palin, in many cases. Which generated a certain amount of angst in the liberal commentariat about What It All Meant For Feminism.
“Do you still cheer,” Slate’s Sara Libby wondered of Whitman’s and Carly Fiorina’s California victories, “if the [glass] ceiling is crashed by two conservative businesswomen?” On “Good Morning America,” Tina Brown fretted that “it almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism.” Writing in The Daily Beast, Linda Hirshman declared that support for abortion rights and Obamacare were litmus tests for true feminism, as opposed to the “selfish” variety that triumphed on Tuesday.
The question of whether conservative women get to be feminists is an interesting and important one. But it has obscured a deeper truth: Whether or not Palin or Fiorina or Haley can legitimately claim the label feminist, their rise is a testament to the overall triumph of the women’s movement.
What Tuesday’s results demonstrated, convincingly, is that America is now a country where social conservatives are as comfortable as liberals with the idea of women in high office.
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