The Women’s Freedom Network (WFN) is a political advocacy group that was an early force in the backlash against gender-inclusive feminism.
Background
WFN was founded in 1993 in Washington by sociologist Rita J. Simon (1931–2013) and anti-trans activist Cathy Young.
In a 1995 profile, Wendy Kaminer wrote in the New York Times:
“Recently, conservative professional women who tend to oppose Government intervention in the marketplace have banded together to form their own groups, like the Women’s Freedom Network, which appeals largely to young, professional white women. These are the women Ms. magazine derides as ‘faux feminists.'”
Kaminer also covered the WFN in 2001 for The American Prospect:
“A little to the left of the IWF, arguing more judiciously that structural barriers to equality have been significantly eroded, if not eliminated, is the Women’s Freedom Network, another Washington-based organization of affluent white professional women, united by disdain for what its president Rita Simon calls “extremist, ideological feminism,” (though it’s hard to imagine how feminism or any political movement might exist bereft of ideology).”
In Mobilizing Resentment, Jean Hardisty wrote:
When conservative, professional anti-feminists look for a compatible political women’s organization outside their work settings, they are not comfortable with either the middle-class grassroots warriors of Eagle Forum, or the evangelical Christian ladies of Concerned Women for America. Needing their own voice, they have generated two new organizations – the Women’s Freedom Network (WFN) and the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). WFN takes itself very seriously as a combination research center and alternative antifeminist voice. IWF’s style is more quirky and hip. Its reputation is built on its skill at working the media. The two organizations sometimes publish the same same right-wing authors, but do not share the same leaders. In both organizations, the leaders and most of the members are white and middle- to upper-middle-class.
Rita Simon founded WFN in 1993 to promote a rightist political analysis of the role of women in society distinct from that of “old traditionalist“ conservative women, especially the Christian women of Concerned Women for America. Simon writes that WFN “views women as competent, responsible individuals who do not need special protections and dispensations from the state…..” She goes on to say that WFN does not view women as victims nor men as enemies. From her perspective, women’s and men’s views are “almost identical.” WFN publishes a quarterly Women’s Freedom Network Newsletter and has published a small series of working papers, as well as a book length collection of essays, Neither Victim Nor Enemy. WFN opposes the hard-fought legislation meant to protect battered women, the Violence Against Women Act; maintains that women are treated too leniently by the judicial system in statutory rape cases; and criticizes sexual harassment laws as increasingly “being transformed into a lethal weapon in some women’s determination to secure the position of boss or doctor for themselves” (emphasis added).
People
Officers
- Rita J.Simon President
- Cathy Young Vice President
- Judith Simon Garrett Treasurer
Board of Directors
- Robyn E. Blumner The St. Petersburg Times
- David Boaz Cato Institute
- Clint Bolick Institute for Justice
- Jean Bethke Elshtain University of Chicago
- Elizabeth Fox Genovese Emory University
- Mary Ann Glendon Harvard Law School
- Joanne Jacobs The San Jose Mercury News
- Jeane Kirkpatrick, The American Enterprise Institute
- Judith Kleinfeld University of Alaska
- Rikki Klieman Court TV
- Edith Kurzweil The Partisan Review
- Anne Mitchell Attorney, Palo Alto CA
- Jennifer Roback Morse Hoover Institution, Stanford University
- Virginia Postrel, Reason Magazine
- Kay A. Schwarzberg Attorney, author, and lecturer
- Christina Hoff Sommers, American Enterprise Institute
- Abigail Thernstrom, Manhattan Institute
- Eugene Volokh University of California at Los Angeles
Newsletter
- Cathy Young Editor
- Claire Morgan Associate Editor
References
Barnes, Bart (August 2, 2013). Rita J. Simon, AU professor, dies at 81. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/2013/08/02/d740846c-fbb7-11e2-8752-b41d7ed1f685_story.html
Boles, Janet K.; Hoeveler, Diane Long (2004). Historical Dictionary of Feminism (2nd ed.). Scarecrow Press, p. 348. ISBN 9780810849464.
Schreiber, Ronnee (2008). “Conservative Women’s Political Activism”. Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 22. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331813.003.0002
Kaminer, Wendy (December 19, 2001). Will Class Trump Gender?: The New Assault on Feminism. The American Prospect https://prospect.org/civil-rights/will-class-trump-gender-new-assault-feminism/
Schultz, Debra L. (2000). Women’s Studies: Backlash. In Kramarae, Cheris; Spender, Dale (eds.). Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women’s Issues and Knowledge. Routledge, p. 2072. ISBN 9781135963156.
Rosen, Ruth (1997). Neither Victim Nor Enemy: Women’s Freedom Network Looks at Gender in America, edited by Rita J. Simon Contemporary Sociology (book review). 26 (1): 19–20. https://doi.org/0.2307/2076573
Kaminer, Wendy (June 4, 1995). Feminism’s Third Wave: What Do Young Women Want. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/04/books/feminisms-third-wave-what-do-young-women-want.html
Rapping, Elayne (Spring 1996). The Ladies Who Lynch. On The Issues. 5 (2): 7–9, 56. ISSN 0895-6014 archive requests: ontheissuesmagazine.com
Resources
The Women’s Freedom Network (womensfreedom.org) [archive]
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)