as an aside, feminists also have some version of this when they talk about the need for more women in office and the difference in what they bring to political office. but this is a very particular to this end, karen agnes who founded the network, which is a conservative organization for college women, praised palin's life choices and goals. she said palin chose to marry her high school sweetheart stating proudly we met at high school and two decades and five children later he's still my guy. she chose to have children and focus her time on raising the children, but to make her community better for children. now, balkman was also touted as a role model in general for this but also as a role model for younger women due to her feminine leadership goals. cordova told a reporter that balkman "stands up for her believes." it's not about power or title.

now, discourse that also celebrates palin and bachmann's toughness. on palin, c.w.a.'s argue that she's not the kind of american who gives into bullies but the -- she quotes this in ore mama grizzly ad, which i didn't have time to show, if you've never seen her mama grizzly ad, it's a fascinating minute and a half ad. it's really well done. palin herself used the mama grizzly image to precisely capture the and to reconcile it.

i'm talking about she offered this this sentiment. you thought pitbulls were tough, well you don't want to mess with mama grizzlies. lot of scary animal imagery going on here. hey have invoked the toughness themselves. as for bachmann, you have to have a very strong back bone and be a conservative woman running for office. bachmann is also described by another organization as having the strange and tenacity to do what's necessary to leave this ation. so here you have femininity suggesting that palin and bachmann can be ladies but also can be counted onto run the country. now i want to say here these complex descriptions are necessary for most women to run for office. so as an aside i think that's important to put out there. people prefer, and if you do

studies and surveys of public opinion surveys, people for women to be communal and warm and kind and they expect men to be aggressive and self directed. what you have is a double bind for women running for office. are people going to say nasty things about them? you can watch clips about hillary clinton when she ran for president. one woman says trying to satisfy this complex set of expectations is impossible. women are penalized both for deviating from the masculine norm and for appearing to be masculine. so i think this feminine toughness is an interesting way for these organizations, conservative women's groups particularly to navigate between cultural demands, as well as

keeping perceptions of these women in line with conservative views about gender roles. so the femininity part re-enforces views about how they're supposed to behave. now the feminine toughness framing not only makes these candidates more appealing to conservative men and women, it also acts as a way for palin and bachmann to be distinguished. for these organizations to distinguish themselves from feminists. so, given that republican voters shy away from supporting republican women, because they think they're too liberal, positioning for these organizations themselves in opposition to feminist is a way for them to help countereffect that. they praised palin because she exudes a can do optimism without the usual feminist it's tough to be a woman leader bitterness. the c.w.a.'s crowds employed similar anti-feminist language, i think my favorite quote of the entire book that i'm working on. it's a little long but pleasant

bear with me. sara palin's feminine appearance, charm and rhetoric transformed the dowdy image of with a her rship, casual and humorous approach to public speaking and her down home expressions, she made harsh, feminists diatribes empty, meaning less and out of date. it reflects her sense of self as a wife, mother and accomplished career woman. so you get it all in there. like margaret thatcher, palin's soft exterior is a stark contrast to her tough inner strength. nlike nanny pelosi's surgery induced gash of a smile, which is hard to endure, palin lights up the room she walks in. here's a way to -- i'm just reading the quote. building, and this is interestingly as a way to

promote palin, but also to feminists. really important for these organizations to do that because as i mentioned earlier, part of their mission is to represent women. so base clir they in this public battle with feminist organizations to say we represent women, women are pro choice, so it's really important for them, it fosters one of their goals. conservative women also argue that palin and bachmann bid for office represent what feminists are long worked for which is entrance into higher public office. but they contend that feminist disapproval reveal flaws and ideology about the movement itself. that is if feminists cared about electing more women to politics they would have elected palin and bachmann. it's an interesting chang. i did some research. feminist groups had to say we didn't mean women, we meant feminists. so it presents a bit of a challenge for feminists themselves in terms of promoting

women in office but saying we're not going to endorse palin. since conservative women activists, as i noted were feminist over the right to represent women, these debates help further their goals. so invoking a feminine toughness frame, to describe these women, cap sures the zrire for conservative women's groups to redescribe gender roles. it also serves to cast feminists as being out of touch while re-enforcing the unfounded stereotype that feminist is unfeminine. palin and bachmann are framed as conservative supermoms and that helps navigate the inflicting tenses between promoting traditional gender role values and wanting more women to be professionally and politically active. so i term this phrase conservative supermom. and that would have been a more fun to thing i wear, i suspect.

but i those this. so as noted in the past, conservative women have chastised feminists for allegedly promoting the notion that women can have it all by balancing child rearing, holding a job in the paid work force and enjoying intimate relations with their partner. so conservatives has chastised feminists for allegedly promoting it. it's not accurate, but nonetheless that's the rhetoric that comes out of conservative's womens groups. despite these previous critiques of supermoms which i eluded to earlier, they actually applauded palin and bachmann for finding ways to fit it all in and frame them as what i'm calling them conservative supermoms. palin, for example, is praised for providing a "a model for how some women can manage motherhood and a professional career and for appealing to women who want to have it all, including staying happily married to the love of their youth and bearing his children." she is also revered because she's a woman who believes it's possible for a woman, and a mother of five at that, to hold

time a full-time c.e.o. job overseeing a multibillion budget, that was when she was governor. so there's that quote, saying palin is great, she can have it all. here you see an embracing of the supermom. now you have that, but what you also see is they praise the alleged supermom talents of palin and bachmann, but supermom comes with some. so to be super, palin and bachmann also have to abide by personal political beliefs that are essential to economic and social controversyism. i'm going to talk a little bit about that. first, these organizations say palin and bachmann yield to their families, especially their husbands. written about palin she doesn't need feminist approval for her lifestyle. the only person's ok she needs for her double career is her husband's. and he seems very happy with sara. as noted, many social conservatives promote a

traditional view of family life in which heterosexual men lead families. that doesn't mean that women have no say or couples don't negotiate with each other. now, the meaning of biblical submission which we can talk more about the q & a have been debated among women, but essentially comes from a biblical passage that says wives submit yourself unto your husbands as onto the lord. now bachmann's acknowledge that she believes in submission generated a lot of public debate and scrutiny. it got played out in the press pretty significantly.

it actually forced women's groups to explain somehow how it is that bachmann could baseballly submit and be president of the united states. so responding to criticism, c.w.a. said in the context of women and leadership, it's important to note that biblical submission is about harmony and well-being in the home and the relationship between a husband and a wife. it has nothing to do with leadership responsibilities, except that no one, even the president of the united states, could treat others with disrespect, expect the sub serve yant spirit from anyone or demand. thus, a woman who willingly submits from a woman and enjoys equal submission, which is part -- that's part of the quote in there. who willingly submits to the husband enjoys cherishing does not have a similar relationship with men at work. a christian woman or man in leadership must lead and fulfill the responsibilities for which

they are accountable both to god and to whom those are serving in leadership capacity. so, basically here, bachmann can fulfill gender theo logical roles but this doesn't translate into her political self, that's basically how it's explained by the concerned women for america. now, in addition to this, palin and bachmann are also opposed to legal abortion and organizations regularly note this as well. most social conservative groups, and was concerned that mccain wasn't aggressive enough in his anti-abortion policies so palin picked up on that when she was running as his running mate. given also that republican voters think that republic women are more liberal, they're promoting their pro life perspective helped the organization that can be very conservative when they run for office. palin herself talked about her decision to bear a child with downs syndrome, to he enforce her views on abortion and to

appeal to social conservatives. finally, conservative women leaders are also ex tolled palin and bachmann both during these policies of the republican party, hinting that their values fall in line with republican voters. so give you a quick quote here. conservatives in the g.o.p. base are understandably proud to have women making their case in support of limited government and free market. these women obviously do appeal to an audience, particularly fellow women. ok, so here to negotiate the tensions between conservative views about gender role and wanting to promote mothers in politics, these organizations employ what i call a conservative supermom frame. and the language also speaks to conservatives by highlighting their beliefs about women in the family but maybe reaches beyond the conservative base to appeal to a broader range of people. ok, so before i elaborate on these findings i want to move to the next part of my project, let me give you the organizational interviews here for a second. i'm only going to highlight some of the findings from here.

some of this is still in the works, and i want to just connect it to the comments i made earlier. basically i interviewed these women and wanted to know how they negotiated these values and how they talked about them as representations of organizations. here's a list i can talk more, about who these women actually are. in the interest of time, i'll do some preliminary findings here. the first is, like discussions of palin and bachmann, the women that i interviewed emphasized to me that the new conservative woman, including themselves, is not constrained by traditional gender roles. when asked whether it was contradictory for conservative mothers to be in the work place, conservative stacy motte found her smart girl politics, quickly shutdown the idea that it rejects mothers being professionally active. she said to me, i think the premise is wrong to start with. i don't think conservative women are pro stay at home moms.

i think we run the gamut just as liberal women do. i men mean, there are plenty of conservative women who want to raise a family and have a areer. so i found this very interesting, i asked her why it is she thought people believe this. so this is this, i got the question, i did my research, why is it that there's this kind of public discourse perhaps meant for her perspective that this is true. she said that liberals per pet waited it. there's some debate about why there's this myth out there, but nonetheless, some of the conservative women are saying it's not accurate. conservativism has been transformed, and is more accepting of mother's professional goals.

any evaluation i make in the argument now over conservative ideology and politics really has to be understood in this new light of wanting to transform the understanding of mother's role. this has to do with the organizations and the interviews themselves and how they talked about promoting palin and bachmann. second, when asked about their personal lives in reference to their professional goals, conservative women countered with responses in the language of choice and personal decision making. so let me explain, this is a quote that this is a personal decision that should be made between you and your family and nobody else should be telling you that one makes you a stronger woman than another one. ok, and when i pushed them on the policy solutions that my deal with the tensions of what mothers in the work place, mothers in professional politics they responded that solutions should be privatized and not come from government social programs. indeed, of course conservative women oppose federally funded

day care. i asked this one woman, she said i'm opposed to child care. i said ok, why is that? she said to me, honestly babies are delicious. they're cute and sweet and their bellies are really soft and ire not going to get someone to eat their bellies if you're paying them $7 an hour. so i think babies need their mamas and their daddies. that's what i was raised in and what i believe in. i just don't think i can stand to drop off my kids to the lowest bidder even if it means saving the world. she had a very visual account of this. but most of the conservative women, i mean if you look at conservative women activism and the groups i study, they're all opposed to federally funded childcare and family leave. they're actively engaged, like against the family medical leave act and so on. so i found that. those are consistent with the organizations that i talked about earlier. but in contrast, to the supermom image of palin and bachmann, i pushed them on it as opposed to reading organizational stuff,

they use slightly different language. a little more complex. they invoke the language of juggling and sacrifice, to talk about how women manage conflicting goals. to sum it up, tea party organizer said to me whoever said you can have it all is full of crap. perhaps more eloquently the liken tonthony lister, playing the harp. she said somebody gave me a great analogy. sort of like playing the harp to make the thing work. to make it all work, playing certain cords, that's what you have to do. but other times in your life you have to shift to another place. indeed a common refrain from conservatives is you can have it all but not at the same time. i would actually like to have that all the feminists said the same thing to me. very interesting, there was only one feminist who said to me that's actually true of men as well. but what you see in the interviews, a little bit more of a nuanced account of the supermom, so, organizational

rhetoric has to produce one thing, when you push people on it personally you'll get sometime something slightly different. finally, when explaining why working mothers may experience difficulties and many of these conservative leaders reference gender differences, that is they argue it's within women's nature to multitask and to juggle. so, one person said the first thing you've got to realize is that god knows what he's doing in sending babies to young women and you are making a terrible mistake if you think you can establish a career and then after that, after you're 40 you decide you want to have a husband and kids. life doesn't work that way. you have a biological clock, even though the feminists have often denied it. the trouble with the studies is that women should -- so, those are some interview highlights. let me get to my conclusions here. all right, the questions opposed in this research. the main question posed here is basically how do conservative women negotiate tensions between

traditional gender role norms and the desire of mothers in politics. i argue it's too simplistic to say. responds to me for the need of conservatives to adapt to political and social realities as well as wanting to increase mothers in the work force and running for office what can we make of this? mothers can be super if their conservative and meet certain standards. so as discussed, women can be supermoms if their identities as mothers is tantamount to their professional goals. power for its own sake is considered unfeminine but seeking elected office is not. running for office when you're the mother of five a acceptable but best accomplished with your

husband's blessing. i want to note that in terms of constructing gender roles, maternal identities, the assertion that palin and bachmann also need to be feminine and atentative to their will of their families confirms something feminist implemented for sometime is that women who want to work outside the home they have to be presented as excellent mothers. second point is that women must work things out with private iesed solutions. there's very little challenge to the role of state and economic policies or structural factors. now of course the language of choice and personal decision making matches well with conservative ideology so it wasn't much of a surprise for them to articulate this. so that part wasn't all that surprising. but i want to argue the important thing about it is that

it translate into public policy goals about how women and mothers and parents, i talk to them mostly about motherhood, how they advocate for public policies. as i noted earlier, they oppose the family medical and leave act. indeed, there's virtually no support for government sponsored social programs that -- exept for tax breaks and businesses that offer plecks time and so on. also very little discussion about cls differences among women, also the role men might play in equal parenting. three, with the increase of conservative women running for office, conservative women have recognized, and they've said to me, a change in family dynamics and gender role ideology. so conservative women themselves are actually expanding ideas about what legitimate gender roles are for conservatives. not in ways that are necessarily identical to what feminists do. and as i noted, conservative womens groups, conservative

mothers are embraced if they fit within a particular notion of femininity. they challenge feminists and they promote conservative goals. now this organizational rhetoric produces a new set of conservative views about motherhood that i think we need to pay attention to and suggest conservative are adapting to a changing environment. i think during upcoming elections we'll see a subtle shift about women running for office. they might help soften the image of the republican party, the image is they're considered to be unfriendly to women's interests and so on. so, they're transforming rhetoric, the way they talk about mothers in politics might affect the republican party that way. the fourth thing i want to say, conservative women -- conservative politics cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the women active in it. that seems like a no brainer, but to look at the research is not a lot. and so, it now with palin when

she ran for office it started to boom a little bit, but there has not within a lot of scholarship on that. conservative women's frames have cultural significance, they have implications how they understand women and politics, through an analysis of their activism, they get a much fuller and more nuanced of politics. finally, i want to argue, maybe in a polly anna way, from the point of gender quality, the promotions of mothers as legitimate candidates for elected office sends an important message about the need for attention to womens rights, and recognition of women's wide ranging abilities. i want to also add that conservative women do not gesture to this being a feminist idea. but feminism is clearly affected conservative goals about promoting women in politics. and these conservative women so heartedly promoted a woman's bid

for vice president validates what feminists have claimed for a long time, that they belong in a public atmosphere. thank you. >> thank you very much. what we'll do now is deidre english will have a response and a bit of a conversation with ronny schreiber. and for the last 15 minutes we'll open up to the floor for questions. christine will have a microphone, and people will be able to ask questions of the panel. >> thank you very much.

i'm deidre english and i cannot claim to the same level of neutrality and objectivity that professor schreiber has brought o this work. i've written critically about conservative women in the past. and, i've also gone as a journalist with great interest ith alaska, to sarah palin's hometown, in something of the same spirit to try to understand her religion, her neighbors, her background, and i really appreciate your scholarship, and to preciate the effort made try to understand, to seek to understand and then to be understood. i think it's a good principle, and i appreciate the respects that you brought for your

subjects. in your own open-mindedness, pointing out their importance for social science as well as in politics. i think you have established if there were any doubt, being mere mouthpieces for men, and that these are women who are speaking for themselves. they're passionately defending their beliefs, which are important to them. you remained an objective scholar and in describing their thinkings, changes in their thinking that you observed, and that may indeed lead to greater sympathy and understanding between the two tribes. but in commenting, i will however fire at you, some of the contradictions that perhaps are better meant for your subjects than for you, as you were not in a position to question their facts. so, today you have focused on a

great iron ni that of all things, in retrospect, sarah palin and michele bachmann have become iconic figures of women who can do it all. in sarah palin's case, having five children, choosing to have a downs syndrome baby while she was governor of alaska, and becoming with her husband and her own parents, active grandparents, sheltering her pregnant, unwed daughter bristol while running for vice president. palin can actually kill a moose, and she has an amazing on-going presence as a immediate media star. so, she may be in running for superwoman of the past decade. but wait, it's the conservative women's movement, as you pointed

out, that have blamed feminism for programming the idea that women can do it all. who's selling that idea do now? who would fill list have to say to palin. since she blames women's study professors for failing to teach mothers to prioritize staying home over working. so, let me comment on this notion right away. and let's not let it just escape us as a sign of progress. it's really a mistaken stereotype of what feminism stands for, or ever has. from the very beginning, feminists saw that women were being swept into the modern workplace by the demands of a modern can't list economy. but first, women were restricted to the pink collar ghetto, sales women, secretaries, nurses. and it was feminists who insisted that women can do professional work and hold

authority. they woke open the law schools, the employment ads, the medical schools, and not to ignore the journalism schools and many other institutions. they clearly saw, from the beginning, that women would not be able to do it all, and they asked society to provide for child care, family leave, flex time, and all services that other advanced can't list countries do offer. for another thing, they asked men to become more active in raising their children. today, studies show that when men are better fathers, families are much happier. and also that working mothers who often have smaller families today are putting in more time nurturing and educating each child than ever before in history, even compared to full time housewives of only a few decades ago.

so the conservative women who say it is feminists who are trying to get women to do it all without support have got their facts wrong. feminists asked for social support, they asked for men's support. they didn't get everything they asked for, and that's the status quo today. a second irony perhaps from a feminist point of view is that had sarah palin and michele bachmann actually succeeded in achieving positions of power, they would have furthered legislation that then would have denied the resources to do it all themselves. so, the conservatives are really not being terribly logical when they criticized feminists for not supporting sarah palin and michele bachmann to pursue higher office, it would have been the death nail to everything that feminists believe in. there's no contradiction there

whatsoever and i think it's an easy charge to dismiss. why would we support women who would further policies that would demand that women who could not do it all by themselves would not be given support. women who would oppose government or works place accommodations for women who are not in such privileged positions with regard to their family resources. when we talk about this, and i think we raised this point professor schreiber, there's a need for some historical and economic perspective. this debate has been with us throut american history. it's not new. and in the case of women's rights, there were liberal women who agitated for the vote for women at the time of the

american revolution. just as there have been conservatives who opposed the women's votes even into the 20th century. so this is a very old debate that we have been conducting. it has held us sometimeyed in so many ways. this issue of gridlock and how long must we remain in this quarrel without making a lot of progress. why have americans been so divided on these issues? i think it's because of larger structures that underlie our civilization and that we rarely talk about. the premodern era was governed systems that -- it wasn't feminism but capitalism that overthrew it, disrupting father dominated productive households and sweeping men and later women into paid labor. we're still in a transition away from it and into a world of

rapid change that conservatives cannot fault anymore than liberals can. the political question is how can we find ways of living modern lives that offer the most benefit to all americans of all classes and races. this is where i am often puzzled by conservative rhetoric on the concept of privacy and choice. the state does not force a woman to divorce, to use contraception, to be a lesbian, or to have an abortion but leaves this to her individual conscience where the law's allowed. why then do conservatives believe that the state should have a right to force her not to marry a woman, not to use contraception, not to have illegal regulated abortion. i asked conservatives why not keep government out of our private lives and leave it to a womans religion, moral beliefs, and conscience.

conservatives seek to restrict the choices of nonconservative women, which is a style which patriarcial to attitudes. this is one place where i perceive a much bigger contradiction in conservative thinking than whether or not a woman should wear lipstick. now, one might ask is this merely a squabble, this life long argument, i mean history long argument. is this merely a squabble among women that men can ignore? i don't think so. we're actually talking about how to organization our civilization, who has children and how many, the way the sexes relate, whether or not let ro sexuality should be the only norm, who will get an education,

who will get a leader. whether talented people can rise without being disequaled by gender. who will care for the sick and elderly, who will be financially supported, when and how. these are such fundamentalal issues that we are talking about that we get to the core of how we live as americans, and what the american dream really is. so they're not merely womens issues, but matters that touch on really all of our lives. and men can and do care about these issues. in fact, i would venture to say that this is really not a split between conservative women versus feminist women, but really rather between conservatives and liberals generally. after all, today, more than ever, most liberal men agree with liberal women on these issues and conservative men and women agree with each other.

many feminists that did construct that battle as one of women against men. women generally being oppressed by men. but perhaps feminists have changed, much as you think that conservative women have changed, in a way we haven't always noticed. today much more you'll find that feminists will see this not as a battle among women, but between women and men, but really between a battle between women -- and in some sense, it's really a battle about holding onto the past, conservatives will often put it versus innovating a new way to live in the future, which is how liberals will often construct

hat they say they are doing. so, i think you've raised the important question of common round, and you've shown that defending conservative ideas, women, the women that you have studied have also really been actively expanding roles for women, and this is a huge paradox. and you've argued that it leads them to some common ground with liberals. indeed, i think we can propose a superwoman of our own to enter that common ground, and i can't think of a better one than nancy pelosi. he is a liberal feminist superwoman who is a devout catholic, with a long-term marriage, who's raised a large

family. she, like sarah palin, enjoys showing off her children and grandkids on the public stage as if to say that a woman can have it all. perhaps in different stages. yet, nancy pelosi does not expect a single working class woman to provide for all of her own needs. she supports a variety of life options for all women and trusts them to make individual decisions without big daddy government telling them what they can and cannot do. government in her hands is conceived of as a resource and a support for women and children, not as a disciplinarian. if we expect women who don't have money or perfectly enabling families to be in the work force, we must do this, provide this for them, or we are of their g the well

children. nancy pelosi is perhaps, from the liberal side, what you've described as feminine toughness. she's feminine, sure she's tough, you have to be to be in politics, but not in terms of her conception of government. so conservatives don't have a lock on those traits. but one thing that nancy pelosi would never do in contrast to e women that you quoted, who attacked jan net reno and others, is that she would never criticize a woman in public office for her looks. and if that is what conservatives propose, i will have to say no thank you. so, let's continue, as you have pioneered, to learn about the principles that conservative women stand for, and how they are evolving. let's perhaps look more at how

liberal or feminists ideas have also evolved and changed, and perhaps we're letting some of that slip out of view. and let's expand the arena of conversation by all means. only if we talk to each other can we correct stereotypes and incorrect ideas that we have about each other. misunderstandings only make matters worse. so let's continue to eliminate them and let's try to get to what the real issues are. thank you. >> i'm sure people have many questions, and i'd like to open the floor to those questions. but let me begin by asking you a little bit about how conservative women felt that,

you said that you felt, they elt they were stereotyped by feminist women. what did they feel were the worst stereotypes that feminists had about them? >> essentially that they only focused on being stay at home mothers and that they really have no other goals or desires to be actively involved in politics. or that feminists baby ignored their contributions to politics. so, that was mostly the concern they had with feminists, in terms of how feminists perceived them. they had a lot of concerns about feminists, but that's broadly speaking. as i noted, they articulated that promoted idealogies that were focused on man hating and so on. they used mostly the terms liberal but also feminists, that feminists have undervalued their contributions to politics.

and, would you be able to comment at all what their stereotypes of feminists were? >> sure. this is where i thought, this is wonderful to do it as a research,, and it's also very frustrating to do it as a researcher. because the stereotypes that are coming out, i'm just recording and saying yes and so on. but i really want to engage in that dialogue. i want to push them on it. i'm a feminist, and they don't really fit that stereotype and let's talk about why we have those. so i'll give an example. when i interviewed phyllis, she said to me, feminists are opposed to marriage and children and i'm a married feminist with children. and so i thought well -- i mean i've heard her say this before, she's written it and so on, i wanted to push her on this. what would you say to a woman who was married, like kim gandy,

she's married, she has children. what would you say to her? she said oh, what i meant to say is that feminists promote policies that are anti-marriage or anti-children. so she had to elaborate. but basically the stereotypes were that women, feminists were basically anti-children, anti-marriage and so on. >> is there an institute for a ,tudy of liberal feminist women a lot of research already on that is what i found. i came to this project, i have to say a regional spark, when i was in college. it s in pennsylvania, where was going down. i interviewed a woman, ever since then, i was completely fascinated with women who would oppose equal rights amendments.

then when i was in graduate school, i was in a program where my major field of study is, and most of the research on women in politics really is about feminists and feminism and politics. jeb rally speaking, obviously there's some exceptions. there's a lot of attention to diversity among women but there -- so i think a lot of scholarship out there on liberal feminism but not enough on conservative feminism. >> what about the conservative women in terms of class, did you look at the demographics of class in terms of who's conservative? >> i did not so far. there are surveys, i'm going to eventually corporate that into my research. but for now, certainly the women that i interviewed and the organization that i'm studying are women who higher, upper income or higher class, you know, i don't like that, upper income families, generally

speaking. so, there's not a lot of discussion about class diversity. i think the lack of support for things like federally funded child care speak to that as well. >> which might be to them equated with spending more taxes. >> absolutely, absolutely. it's not like we should ignore the problem, the best approach is to have flex time in the work place, or maybe provide tax incentives to businesses and so on, but it should never be government mandated. >> you offered to say a little bit more about the two organizations, and i know that the independent -- the independent women's forum, one strain of conservativism and the conservative women of america is quite different. >> right. >> would you say a little bit more about the differences between conservative women? >> yeah, absolutely. so, independent womens forms was

founded by a woman who originally founded a group buzz she worked were judge thomas. they decided after that, where they were successful, to find an organization. they do not take position on abortion or same-sex marriage, and they really focus on what they consider to be economic policies, business to government regulation of businesses and so on. they talk about how those policies are either affect women or women's perspectives on them. concerned women for america is what i would consider a socially conservative group. they mostly deal with issues having to do with abortion, issues of "morality rights" same-sex marriage, progry, so on. there is some overlap and historically i think there's been some great work by sara diamond and others about the way that conservative politics have managed to fuse the two. i think they might be encountering some troubles now with that. overtime, some of these groups, they don't always work together,

they somehow manage to put out coherent messages, even though the independent women's forums does not deal with issues like abortion. >> what happens to a conservative woman who really believes in individual rights and is perhaps wants very limited government but also really believes in keeps, does believe in abortion rights, there are conservative and republican women who believe that. >> yeah, i interviewed several of them. >> are they without an organization? are they without power? >> i think without power, perhaps. i mean, i think, and i think this might be true, when you hear this now from the more moderate women in office. >> i raise thad question of the contradiction, there's a contradiction that i see, between wanting less government and then wanting more government restrictions on women's personal decisions. >> right. >> and on private life. that does seem like a big contradiction. it's easy for me to imagine a conservative woman who would make the decision to resolve that contradiction in favor of

freedom, individual rights, and privacy. >> right, i mean i think that is true and i think they still feel like for now the republican party is welcoming enough in terms of the economic policies and so on. and then on the abortion stuff they're holding their nose, to be honest. but there are a lot, there are pro choice republicans womens group, there are pro choice republican women in office and i think those are the women who frustrated with the emphasis on anti-abortion policies. i think it's just not clean. so i agree with you that there are certain contradictions, but they don't believe the democratic party represents the things they are most concerned with. so, yes of course they are pro choice and so on, but in terms of what the government should be doing and the things they're concerned about economically they still feel comfortable in the republican party and that's what they choose to focus on.

> i want to ask you one very fundamental question, is there really any benefit to finding common ground? 've been talking as though there is. would it make a difference politically to find more common ground? >> well, i think there's some places where it would. the one area i think women should work together is media sexism. and so, there's no reason that there needs to be a divide among women about how media, particularly media coverage of women, particularly women running for office or in office, there's no reason there needs to be a divide in terms of assessing or evaluating that. there's also a group that's formed called name it, change it. they're nonpartisan. they're calling it out on everyone. the national organization for

women critiqued newsweek, they had a cover of michele bachmann, called her the queen of rabling. it was a horriblely unflattering photo of her and they were critiqued for that. i think that's an area, where it doesn't make any sense you could not have women working together saying this is problematic. you're hindering women's promotions in politics because of that. so that would be one area. >> let me say one thing, really a sunlight for another conversation, but i would love to learn more how mainstream media is guilty of prom gating some of these stereotypes in the first place. > which one? it's an interesting study to be had. there's certainly a role of hat.

if you look at major news networks and so on, i think it's changing slightly, but conservative women have done a very good job of getting themselves on television and representing conservatives because i think the media see that as a novelty at some point. absolutely that. i think the other area is, just in terms of saying we need more women in elective office. this becomes a little challenging right? because like i said earlier, you know, there are women and then divides among them. so certainly a lot of organizations who are nonpartisan for promoting women in elective office. but they do run into some challenges which is they're promoting women, if they're conservative, the women may be feminists or vice versa so that does present challenges about dripsive versus -- which is you may be a woman but you may not be acting for my interest. >> indeed, indeed. great, thank you very much. let's open this up. there must be questions that are .eople are eager to ask

>> of feminist not sporting conservative candidates, did you ask them, do they support liberal women candidates because they're women? >> absolutely. >> and what was their response? >> they said no. because it's never been a goal of these conservative women's groups, now this is changing. this is one of the things i talked about, but it's never been a goal of conservative womens groups to get more women in elected positions of power, until recently. but it has been a goal of feminists organizations. i know you said that, of course they weren't going to support palin and obviously that's true. but i think it does require feminist groups to be a little bit more specific in terms of talking about what they care about in promoting women and electing women like that. so they don't see it in contradictory because it's never been a stated goal for them to get women in elected office. it really wasn't a problem for

hem. >> what about ethnic diversity? >> right, again, just state that the organizations and the women that i interview and study are national and elite, so you don't get a ton of diversity. i have more age diversity, i have phyllis who is 89 and i've interviewed college women activist. which was very interesting to me to see the differences. i have that. there's some ethnic and racial diversity, but not a lot. again what i'm calling the elite level, in terms of surveys people who identify as conservatives and so on, there's more difference there. >> so the feminine toughness frame that you're talking about is not, well the feminine part of it is not new at all because

we go back to the 1,900's, women at that time were using their femininity or their role as mothers to support their political stances, so we should vote that we have the children in the family that the men don't have and -- or we're for peace because we know what war does to the men and children, and when women for peace were called in, they brought their children in and brought flowers to show hey, we're very traditionally feminine. it's not new, it seems like these women are kind of a hundred years behind the times and they're not really offering something that's strikingly new to politics. so that brings me to my question, which is they're claiming this conservative wicket's activists have cultural significance. i didn't see exactly how they're contributing to the conservative or transforming the conservative agenda in the way that maybe some people could point to the

women in the democratic party. i'm actually interested in the impact of the women. so, to the first point briefly, i don't know necessarily that these women are, i would say it's new or they're necessarily behind the times per say, it's just a way for them, it's just what they did. that was true on both sides, if you looked at women, we talked briefly women who oppose suffrage,, so it's not really new for conservative women either. just the way they've been doing it for women in elected office. in terms of shifting, having an impact on the republican party, think the more women who are -- currently they don't run well in primaries because in part people think they're too liberal. there's an idea that they may be more feminist. so from the perspective of reason cannes in the republican parties, the more trorte women you have out there in making

these claims, you may have held republican women running for office because you'll shift the idea that you don't have to be a man to be conservative. which helps republicans, the republican party. so i think that's incredibly important for them. the other thing is there's a gender gap. the gender gap that i'm talking about is that women, as a whole, although it's not just about gender, race is an important factor here, prefer democratic candidates, particularly in presidential elections and so on. to the extent you can get more women running for office and getting more conservative women out there in being pligly active, i think you may have some impact on that. again, this is all from the perspective of the republican party. i think the final piece of this is part of the reason there's also a relatively low number of republican women in office is the republican party hasn't done a particularly good job of recruiting and training. so more organization leaders say that's a problem, i think that

will have impact on the way the republican party deal with women candidates. >> well, thank you all very much or coming. -- >> wednesday, we'll have highlights from the second season of our first ladies series. my education expires after 5-10 years. everything is new. donerically what we have his slice human life into four slices. one is a play phase in the learned phase and the work stage

and a resting phase and eventually dying. i think that we should do is weerweave these phases should do them all at the same time because a world moves so fast we can afford to have a single type of education anymore. we really need to stay up-to- date. ceos ofudacity, or and others on the future of the new industrial revolution. on c-span twos book tv, unflinching courage, former -- daughters of civil rights leaders and segregationists share their memories of the civil rights era at 8:30. span,ming up next on c- "washington journal" is live with your phone calls and tweets.

a discussion in the changing .olitical landscape in 45 minutes, look at the top stories of 2013 and the decline of the middle class a little past 50 years. >> good morning everyone. welcome to the "washington journal" on this new year's eve. as the it comes to closely want to get your take this morning on the top news stories of 2013. those new health care plans will kick in, or the 16 day shutdown. benghazi and the congressional investigation that havewed or is it what we learned from the nsa leaker edward snowden about the agencies surveillance program. we want