; Note Because almost any variant of feminism can have a conservative element, this list does not attempt to list variants of feminism simply with conservative elements. Instead, this list is of feminism variants that are primarily conservative. It may include organizations or individuals where conservative variants of feminism are more readily identified that way, but is primarily a list of variants
per se. Generally, organizations and people related to a particular variant of feminism should not be included in this list but should be found by following links to articles about the variants of feminism with which such organizations and people are associated. • Conservative feminism (in addition to various variants of feminism in this list that are conservative): • Katherine Kersten objects "that in many of their endeavors women continue to face greater obstacles to their success than men do", thus acknowledging that
sexism exists, and does not reject feminism entirely but draws on a classical feminist tradition, for example
Margaret Fuller. Kersten advocates for conservative feminism based on equality and justice defined alike for women and men and acknowledgment of historical and present injustice suffered by women. She also advocates building on Western ideals and institutions, with reform pursued slowly and cautiously and accepting that human failings mean that perfection is unattainable. Her concerns include crime and violence against women, cultural popular media's degradation of women, noncommittal sex, and poverty's feminization, but opposing affirmative action and class action litigation. •
Sarah Palin "made her case for conservative feminism" in 2010, at a meeting of the
Susan B. Anthony List. •
Richard A. Posner "suggest[s]" "'conservative feminism' .... is ... the idea that women are entitled to political, legal, social, and economic equality to men, in the framework of a lightly regulated market economy." Posner tentatively argues for taxing housewives' at-home
unpaid work to reduce a barrier to paid outside work, also argued by D. Kelly Weisberg to be rooted in a
Marxist feminist argument for
waged housework, and argues for sex being a factor in setting wages and benefits in accordance with productivity, health costs with pregnancy, on-the-job safety, and longevity for pensions. Posner is against
comparable worth among private employers, against
no-fault divorce, in favour of
surrogate motherhood by binding contract, against rape even in the form of non-violent sex, and for a possibility that pornography may either incite rape or substitute for it. Posner does not argue for or against an abortion right, arguing instead for a possibility but not a certainty that the fetus is "a member of society"; this is because she says
libertarianism and economics do not say one way or the other. Posner argues that the differences between the genders on average include women's lesser aggressiveness and greater child-centeredness, and has "no quarrel" with law being empathetic to "all marginal groups." •
Maternal feminism •
Equity feminism •
Individualist feminism was cast to appeal to "younger women ... of a more conservative generation", and includes concepts from
Rene Denfeld and
Naomi Wolf, essentially that "feminism should no longer be about communal solutions to communal problems but individual solutions to individual problems", and concepts from
Wendy McElroy. •
Evangelical Protestant Christian pro-feminism: • The
National Woman's Party in the U.S. was led by
Alice Paul, described as articulating a "narrow and conservative version of feminism". •
New Catholic feminism, embraced by conservative Catholic women as a form of reconciling their struggle for equality with the Church's official teachings on women. Influenced by
personalism and
phenomenology, as well as
Pope John Paul II's
Mulieris dignitatem, this school is represented by historian
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, theologians
Alice Von Hildebrand,
Prudence Allen, and Robert Stackpole, and journalist
Colleen Carroll Campbell, among others. • New conservative feminism, or backlash feminism, is arguably
anti-feminist, and is represented by
Betty Friedan in
The Second Stage and
Jean Bethke Elshtain in
Public Man, Private Woman and anticipated by Alice Rossi,
A Biosocial Perspective on Parenting. These authors do not necessarily agree with each other on all major points. According to Judith Stacey, new conservative feminism rejects the politicization of sexuality, supports families, gender differentiation, femininity, and mothering, and deprioritizes opposition to male domination. • Old conservative feminism or domestic feminism, from the 19th century. •
Postfeminism •
Reactionary feminism, emphasizes traditional
gender roles,
heteronormativity, and the
family as solutions to women's socio-economic challenges. Reactionary feminists argue that
progressive politics deny biologically based, evolutionarily determined differences between men and women. Many reactionary feminists are
anti-abortion. They align with aspects of
maternal feminism and reject the
sexual revolution. • Right-wing feminism, or balanced feminism, includes the work of
Independent Women's Forum,
Feminists for Life of America, and ifeminists.net headed by
Wendy McElroy. It generally draws on principles of
first-wave feminism, and against both
post-feminism and academic or
radical feminism, the latter being defined to include left and progressive politics, not only feminism based on gender oppression. Right-wing feminism supports both motherhood and women having careers, and both individuality and
biological determinism; it accepts gender equality in careers while believing that numerical equality will naturally not occur in all occupations. •
State feminism •
Imperial feminism • The
Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) was formed originally by some of the more conservative members of the
National Organization for Women (NOW) when NOW was viewed as radical. The members who founded WEAL focused on employment and education, and shunned issues of contraception and abortion. Its founders called it a "'conservative NOW'". Its methods were "conventional", especially lobbying and lawsuits. The departures from NOW left NOW freer to pursue
reproductive freedom and the
Equal Rights Amendment. • In the 21tst-century United Kingdom, it is common for prominent women in the
Conservative Party to declare that they are feminists; this trend began with
Theresa May wearing a T-shirt by the
Fawcett Society emblazoned with the words "This is What a Feminist Looks Like". British female Conservative parliamentarians says that they are feminists and claim feminist justification, while advocating a range of policies, from equal career opportunities for women to, in the case of
Anna Soubry and others, opposing pornography. The Conservative MP
Nadine Dorries has even put forward a feminist argument for restricting abortion. == See also ==