Female Empowerment, Leftist Style, Is a Dead-End Road

Sept 9, 2010

This month marks the 1st annual WIE Symposium, or women’s conference, in New York. WIE stands for Women: Inspiration & Enterprise.
In a full-page Wall Street Journal ad, the WIE conference is billed as “dynamic” and calls “all women who want to make a difference.” Young women can meet their “role models, connect with peers, and network with noted exceptional women leaders.”  The conference boasts an impressive list of recognizable names — mostly from the fashion industry and mainstream media, since those are the names young women know most about. If I were easily impressed (and younger), I might be tempted to pick up the phone and make a plane reservation. (Fortunately, I’ll be attending another conference — one that’s focused on how to take back America from the WIE women.)

What’s glaring about this women’s conference is that it isn’t billed as a liberal conference. In fact, there are no political words at all — implying that powerful women are, for the most part, left-wing. There are no conservative women on the list, with the exception of Dana Perino — who’s probably the token conservative so the leaders of WIE can say, “See? We’re diverse!” (Reminds me of the new book Secrets of Powerful Women, which tells the stories of roughly 20 women in politics — but only a small fraction are Republican. And not just any Republican — pro-choice Republicans.)
Of course anyone is entitled to organize a conference, but the last thing today’s young women need is more guidance from women on the left. This group — via academia, the media, and Hollywood — have done enough damage to the modern generation.
Left-wing women, a.k.a. feminists, have brought American women nothing but misery by teaching them that America is a patriarchal society and that women are discriminated against at every turn. To hear the media tell it, the only women who have made something of their lives are leftists who “broke through the glass ceiling” for the rest of us. But as Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard (who started out as a secretary) and 2010 Republican nominee for the United States Senate, said:

“What glass ceiling?”

This is not the message young women are used to hearing. Rather, they’re besieged with “feminist” lingo via a relentless focus on women’s empowerment (beginning in college), girls’ self-esteem, and women’s needs in general. The Oprah Show is almost entirely devoted to women and their issues, as is We television for women and, of course, the Lifetime channel — which might as well be titled “All Men Are Wife Beaters and Neanderthals.”


As if the media messages aren’t bad enough, we must contend with powerful women in politics. In late 2009, Maria Shriver wrote a 400-page report in conjunction with the left-wing think tank, Center for American Progress, called “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” Its premise is that the traditional family is a thing of the past, and Americans must wake up to the new world we’ve created. Women run things today — and that’s just the way it is. Writes Shriver,

As we move into this phase we’re calling a woman’s nation, women can turn their pivotal role as wage-earners, as consumers, as bosses, as opinion-shapers, as co-equal partners in whatever we do into a potent force for change. Emergent economic power gives women a new seat at the table—at the head of the table.

The Shriver Report was delivered to each of the Fortune 500 companies, all 535 members of Congress, and President Obama — who says he’s constantly looking for ways to improve women’s lives. He and Nancy Pelosi believe American women are victims of discrimination — based on the fact that women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn. As President Obama said a few weeks ago in his Presidential Proclamation on “Women’s Equality Day”:

As we celebrate this important milestone and the achievements and shattered ceilings of the past, we also recognize the inequalities that remain and our charge to overcome them. Almost 50 years after the Equal Pay Act was enacted, American women still only earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn. These disparities remind us that our work remains unfinished. My Administration remains committed to advancing women’s equality in all areas of our society and around the world.

Fortunately, smart women (i.e. conservative women) know true empowerment does not lie in feminist ideology. The only way to be truly empowered is for women to reject so-called feminism, embrace marriage and motherhood (if that is what they desire, and most do), find meaningful work — which includes raising children, caregiving, and volunteering — and stay true to themselves and their principles.
That other path — the one young women are exposed to a daily basis — is nothing but a dead-end road.