Hear Me Roar
The feminist script for the 2008 presidential campaign, which was supposed to be the story of Hillary Clinton's run for the White House, took a sharp right turn in August. To some women's dismay and others' delight, Clinton's historic run was overshadowed by a newcomer to the national scene, Sarah Palin. And while Palin's candidacy can hardly be called a success -- she ended up as a scapegoat for the Republican loss -- it is likely to change the landscape for women in politics, and for the rest of us. If nothing else, she has given feminism a new face, with profound appeal to women of different ages and walks of life.
Palin's meteoric rise took old-school feminists by surprise, and not in a good way. Some reacted with startling rage. Salon.com writer Cintra Wilson branded her a "Christian Stepford Wife" and "Republican blowup doll." Novelist Jane Smiley simply called her "bitchy and arrogant.''
But many found Palin inspiring. Small-town mothers flocked to Palin rallies, holding up signs like OUTSPOKEN CONSERVATIVE MOMS FOR PALIN, and striking a note of womanpower dramatically at odds with the Stepford wife stereotype. "Women are going to take over," 72-year-old Julia Burns of Lebanon, Ohio, told the Washington Post, voicing a sentiment not often heard at Republican campaign events. "We're sick and tired of playing by men's rules. They had better move out of the way." I am conservative woman, hear me roar.
I was among those initially buoyed by Palin's candidacy, even if my views -- mostly conservative on economics and foreign policy, mostly liberal on social issues -- are far removed from her social conservatism. Unlike right-wing female leaders of the past such as antifeminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly, Palin unabashedly identified herself as a feminist, and many of her supporters embraced the F-word as well. On the Democracy Project blog, conservative scholar Laurie Morrow hailed Palin as the embodiment of "a feminism that is not hostile to men [and] honors women who work hard to balance a traditional home life with professional ambitions."
Palin herself spoke of being raised "in a family where gender hasn't been an issue" and declared that women today "have every opportunity that a man has to succeed.'' She presented her life as "doing it all" model (with the hands-on role for her husband) -- a cheerful, can-do feminism that is far more appealing to women and men than a focus on female victimhood.
The other plus of Palin's rise is the sudden visibility of conservative feminism -- no longer an oxymoron. Representation for feminism across the political spectrum is a good thing. If women and men can agree on gender equity, even while disagreeing on foreign policy, taxes, or gun control, we can do more to promote equal treatment.
While I thank Palin's candidacy for these gains, I found Palin herself a disappointment. With growing evidence that her qualifications for the job of vice president were slim, her candidacy began to look more like the merit-free affirmative action that conservatives have always deplored. Her lack of ideas and her divisiveness, pitting "pro-American parts of the country" against urban elites, undercut her appeal for many.
And yet the Palin moment will likely have a positive legacy. Her candidacy may have forever remade social conservatism in a more feminist image. The right has long been ambivalent about working mothers; conservatives from former Senator Rick Santorum to talk radio doyenne Dr. Laura Schlessinger have chided mothers who find careers more "gratifying" (Santorum's words) than fulltime motherhood. In 2008, that kind of mother became a conservative hero. The few voices on the right that rose in criticism of her choices -- including Schlessinger's -- were quickly drowned out, and most conservatives denounced as sexist any doubts that Palin could simultaneously mother her brood, love her husband, and govern, even at the highest levels. In fact, the stigma on working motherhood should be forever gone from the conservative roster of family values. You can't frown on moms with careers when your hero is a mom who was back on the job three days after giving birth.
The women Palin has brought into feminism's orbit are also here to stay. Shortly after the election, I gave a talk about the election at Touro College's law school in Long Island, New York. Afterward, a student in her late 20s made a powerful statement about how the campaign had affected her. "I'm a professional woman who is also a wife and a mom, and a pro-life, conservative Christian," she said. "I have always felt that feminism did not speak to me or for me. When I saw Sarah Palin, I felt I could finally call myself a feminist, because here was a feminist like me." The voices of such women may one day transform the political landscape in ways we cannot yet predict -- perhaps remaking the right in a more flexible, female-friendly image.
Even in traditionally feminist circles, the "Palin effect" should spark healthy debate. In the 1993 book Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century, Naomi Wolf wrote that feminism had to discard litmus tests that excluded millions of women because of their beliefs about the environment, guns, or abortion. The beliefs of conservative and Republican women should be "respected as a right-wing version of feminism," Wolf wrote. She would no doubt be appalled to see her argument used on behalf of Palin, whom she assailed last fall as nothing less than "the designated muse of the coming American police state." But Palin's popularity highlights the need for ideological diversity in the women's movement.
It is too early to tell whether Palin will redeem herself in 2012 as a candidate who is less polarizing and more substantive. Perhaps she will. Or perhaps conservative feminism is still waiting for its true star, its own Margaret Thatcher: strong, charismatic, unquestionably capable of leadership and of balancing the traditional and the modern. What we do know is that conservative feminism -- a practical, individualist, optimistic feminism that embraces female strength and femininity, achievement and family, belief in community and small government -- has a vast constituency. Without including this base, we can never mobilize the full potential of female power to work for more opportunities, more choices, more equity for all.
-- Cathy Young
Originally published in MORE magazine, February 2009.
