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How Carly Fiorina Is Redefining Feminism
10/28/2015   By Christina Hoff Sommers and Christine Rosen | POLITICO
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Debates seem to be Carly Fiorina’s best moments. After the last one, her poll numbers shot up, and the Internet was buzzing with analyses of her strong performance. 

Among the questions that came up in the wake of the debate was this one: Is Carly Fiorina a feminist? In a world where to be a feminist seems to signify that you are also a liberal, what does it mean when a conservative professes to be a feminist? Is it even possible? 

Well, here’s your answer: Of course it is! 

Fiorina might not be a feminist if the term is restricted to what LA Times columnist Meghan Daum has called the “liberal, abortion-rights supporting … reusable-eco-bag toting, dangling-earring-wearing” set. But, then, neither are most Americans. A recent Vox poll is typical: Only 18 percent of Americans identify as feminist.

Instead, Fiorina has offered us something better: a model of female power that is free of the whining and pandering that has for so long plagued modern feminism. It’s also a model a large number of Americans could embrace, regardless of party or gender—and one that could give the face of Republican Party politics a much needed makeover. While the media struggles to decide whether Fiorina is or isn’t a feminist, it’s possible they’re missing that her candidacy represents the beginning of a postfeminist era in politics, where what matters is a woman’s opportunity, not adherence to specific policies or a platform built on “women’s” issues.

This postfeminist approach is by no means anti-feminist. Rather, it draws on a model of women’s liberation that thrived in the past, lives in the hearts of most Americans and is ripe for resurgence: equity feminism. Equity feminism stands for the moral, social and legal equality of the sexes—and the freedom of women (and men) to employ their equal status to pursue happiness as they define it. It’s the feminism of anyone who has said, “I’m not a feminist, but ….” Equity feminism does not view men and women as opposing tribes. Theories of patriarchal oppression are not among its founding tablets. Put simply, equity feminism affirms for women what it affirms for everyone: dignity, opportunity and personal liberty.

What a refreshing change this would be for the feminist movement. Decades of squabbling over who is and isn’t a feminist, ideological policing by activist groups and demands for litmus tests on issues like abortion have created a collective cultural exhaustion around this particular f-word. Fiorina captured that divisiveness in one deft sentence: “Over the years feminism has devolved into a left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections.”

By contrast, Fiorina recently describes a feminist as “a woman who lives the life she chooses. … A woman may choose to have five children and home-school them. She may choose to become a CEO, or run for president.” 

Of course, Republicans haven’t always been adept at promoting this form of feminism, despite their embrace of its values—especially in recent years: During the last presidential race we heard Mitt Romney awkwardly reference his “binders full of women.” And at the most recent of this year’s debates, Mike Huckabee had trouble finding a woman worthy of appearing on the $10 bill who wasn’t his wife (Ben Carson chose his mother). 

But equity feminism has a rich history, even among Republicans. According to popular wisdom, the great victories of second-wave women’s liberation were won by bra-burning, street-protesting radicals in the late 1960s and 1970s. In fact, bras were never burned (though a few girdles were thrown into a “freedom trash can”). The second wave actually started in the early 1960s. Its landmark achievements were the work of a group of Republican and Democratic women—lawyers, commissioners and legislators. Aided by male colleagues, they garnered strong bipartisan support for women’s rights in America and won major victories in Congress and in the courts. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act. The Title IX equity law and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act were signed into law in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, a socially conservative Republican. Between 1971 and 1975, a Republican dominated Supreme Court struck down one discriminatory law after another. 

Like that groundbreaking legislation, Fiorina-style feminism is focused on opportunity rather than grievance, and Fiorina’s own optimism about women’s progress fits well with it. Unlike previous female Republican presidential candidates like Elizabeth Dole, whose campaign slogan was “Let’s Make History” and who emphasized her experience not just as a senator but as a senator’s wife, Fiorina refuses to play either the traditionally conservative “wife-and-mother” card or the gender card. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton relentlessly references how she is poised to make history and can’t seem to stop reminding us that she is a grandmother.

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