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Independent Women's Forum

Men in charge of small children are like women and parallel parking: Attention must be paid or something's going to get dented." - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, Meet Today's Dad: A Model to Avoid, National Review

Originally formed in 1991 as "Women for Clarence Thomas" in an effort to secure the nominee a seat on the Supreme Court. Just what the Independent Women's Forum is independent from is unclear -- it certainly cannot claim independence from the White House with Vice-Presidential wife Lynne Cheney as Director Emeritus and ultra-conservative pundit and Bush advisor Larry Kudlow as a board member. IWF has even been awarded a grant as part of the US Department of State's $10 million Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative to help a group of Iraqi women leaders define their role in Iraq's government.

Independent Women's Forum...

thinks child support should be voluntary for men: "The hard bottom line to these conflicts is that if abortion is legal and ultimately a woman's decision, then supporting the child should ultimately be the man's decision..." - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, But Dad Can't Do it All, June 17, 2005.

fights to put the Supreme Court in conservative hands: "One of the most important of the institutions captured by the Left is the Supreme Court- For example, in past terms, there have been decisions defining the family, protecting pornography, adopting rules rendering it virtually impossible to prosecute obscenity, refusing states the authority to support all-male military academies, creating special rights for homosexuals, limiting school disciplinary procedures, and banishing religion from public life. And, of course, inventing a right to abortion." - Robert Bork, writing for Ex Feminia newsletter, October 2000

believes that comprehensive sex education encourages promiscuity: "It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, at times, the feminist movement is not remedying a lack of information about safe sex, but seeking to entirely divorce it from morality and to encourage more sexual activity." - Carrie Lucas, Sex (Ms.) Education, February 10, 2005

advocates shaming and firing people for having sex: "[T]o the extent there is any hope at all of arresting America's moral decay, conservative elites must take the lead not only in lamenting the consequences of the sexual revolution, but in actually enforcing a sense of shame. Enforcement, moreover, may mean more than judgmental gossip. It also may mean sanctions ranging from chilly social greetings to total social ostracism and even loss of a job." - Melinda Ledden Sidak, Not at My Table

denies that gender inequality exists: "I do not believe that women in contemporary American society are oppressed; they do not constitute a subordinate class. I believe American women are among the freest and most liberated in the world. It is no longer reasonable to say that as a group women are worse off than men." - Christina Hoff Sommers, "Sex, Lies, and Feminism" speech, University of Chicago

gives three cheers for the Bush agenda: "If you are put off by the climate of victimization surrounding modern day feminism, if you are dismayed to see abortion treated as sacrosanct, if you plan on voting for Bush this November: that's okay! You can advocate personal accountability, be pro-life, vote Republican and still be a feminist." - Amanda Morris, Feminism: Not Just for Radicals, November 29, 2004

gets praise in return: "Our nation's Founders would be proud of the work and ideals of the Independent Women's Forum. This is a group of dedicated and caring women committed to the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility for everyone-I am optimistic about the opportunities younger generations of women will have because of the path that was cleared by women like those in the Independent Women's Forum. Together, we can make changes that are in the best interests of all working women." - U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, April 20011

Background / Strategy and Tactics / Board and Allies
In their own words: Feminism, Gender roles, Sex Education, Homosexuality, Economic and tax policy, Contraception and abortion / Website

Background

History: The ad hoc "Women for Clarence Thomas" became official in 1992 under the name Independent Women's Forum. The group was founded as an anti-feminist right-wing counter to NOW's grassroots efforts. As described on its website, Independent Women's Forum works to "counter the dangerous influence of radical feminism in the courts, combat corrosive feminist ideology on campus, change the terms of the debate on quality of life issues affecting American women." 2 A 2001 Washington Post article explains that Independent Women's Forum, "champions a laissez-faire brand of conservatism that stresses limited government, free-market capitalism and personal responsibility, but with a gendered twist." 3

Mission Statement: "The Independent Women's Forum was established to combat the women-as-victim, pro-big-government ideology of radical feminism. We seek to restore, strengthen, and extend that which promotes women's well being by advancing the principles of self-reliance, political freedom, economic liberty, and personal responsibility." 4

Budget: $1.3 million (FY 2002)

Publications: The Women's Quarterly, Ex Femina newsletter, SheThinks online youth magazine, and issue reports.

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Strategy and Tactics

Recruiting the next generation of anti-feminists
Recruiting the next generation of anti-feminists: Independent Women's Forum puts a lot of energy into appealing to young women, especially online. To attract younger women to the organization, Independent Women's Forum operates two youth-oriented websites and sponsors a variety of programs geared toward young government interns and college students. The group also publishes a newsletter called SheThinks that is aimed at college-aged women. Independent Women's Forum pitches the newsletter to readers as being a "guide to bringing commonsense feminism to your campus." Interestingly, while IWF's main website is geared toward an older audience and remains critical of feminism, the group attempts to court younger women who grew up accepting a feminist identity by framing its right-wing beliefs as a conservative form of feminism.

Using a "sister organization" to do its political work: IWF formed Independent Women's Voices, a 501(c)(4), to be the lobbying and political arm of the organization. IWF says its "sister group-directly lobbies government officials on public policy." 5

Funding Sources: IWF is funded almost exclusively by large grants from conservative foundations with a few specific programs funded by major government grants. The private conservative foundation grants are from, for example, the Olin, Scaife and Randolph foundations, and generally are not tied to any specific programs; they are just large sums of money to be spent at IWF's discretion.

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Board and Allies

Board of Directors
Larry Kudlow:6
IWF's first male board member. National Review contributing editor, host of CNBC's "Kudlow & Company." He was a member of the Bush Cheney Transition Advisory Committee. During President Reagan's first term, he helped develop the administration's economic policies as the associate director for economics and planning, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President.

Abigail Thernstrom7
Republican commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Accodring to the conservative MassNews, Thernstrom supports ridding the Commission of all Democrats, "The political appointees involved with this commission should have resigned with the old administration. The Bush administration should get them out."

R. Gaull Silberman
A founding member of IWF. She was appointed in 1984 by President Reagan to be a Commissioner at the EEOC and was reappointed in 1990 by President George Bush, serving as Vice Chairman of the Commission from 1985 until 1994.

Mary Arnold
She was the Associate Director for Economics and Government at the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan.

Carol T. Crawford
She is currently a Federalist Society Senior Advisor. She was a member of the International Trade Commission from 1991 to 2000 and before that was Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 1989 to 1990.

Heather R. Higgins, Chairman
She is currently a Federalist Society Senior Advisor. She was a member of the International Trade Commission from 1991 to 2000 and before that was Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 1989 to 1990.

Lynne V. Cheney, Director Emeritus
Married to VP Dick Cheney. She is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Midge Decter, Director Emeritus
She is on the Board of Directors at the Heritage Foundation and a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. She co-chaired the Coalition for the Free World with Donald Rumsfield. She is currently married to Norman Podhoretz (one of the founders of neo-conservatism).

Kimberly O. Dennis, Director Emeritus
Formerly with the Olin Foundation and San Francisco's Pacific Research Institute. She was also the Executive Director of the Philanthropy Roundtable (which was established by the Bradley Foundation to coordinate conservative grant-making).

Wendy Lee Gramm, Director Emeritus
She was on Enron's board of directors before its collapse. She held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, when it exempted from regulation Enron trading in energy derivatives. She was also head of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) 'Information and Regulatory Affairs'. She is married to Senator Phil Gramm.

Louise V. Oliver, Director Emeritus
She was on Enron's board of directors before its collapse. She held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, when it exempted from regulation Enron trading in energy derivatives. She was also head of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) 'Information and Regulatory Affairs'. She is married to Senator Phil Gramm.

Staff (small organization, only 10 employees in 20038 )

Nancy M. Pfotenhauer, President & Chief Executive Officer:9
In 2004, Washingtonian magazine named her one of the most important conservative leaders in the nation's capital. In 1987 she was a senior economist at the Republican National Committee and was promoted to chief economist in 1988. Selected by the Bush transition team at age 24, she served as the economist for the independent agencies task force for then President-elect George H.W. Bush. She worked as economic counsel to Senator William Armstrong, a member of the Republican Leadership, serving on both the Finance and Budget Committees. In 2002, she served as a delegate to the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women. The Bush Administration also has appointed her to the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. Additionally, she is a member of the National Advisory Council of the For Our Children Social Security Education Project and served as a member of the Office of the 21st Century Workforce of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board.

Michelle D. Bernard, Senior Vice President10
She worked with the 2000 Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee, Inc. She is leading IWF's Iraqi women's democracy initiative and is the program officer of the Iraqi Women's Educational Institute (IWEI). IWEI is a joint project of IWF, the American Islamic Congress, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Carrie L. Lukas, Director of Policy11
She worked as an analyst for the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Choice in 1997. She was a senior domestic policy analyst for the House Republican Policy Committee under the stewardship of Chairman Christopher Cox. She was also a member of the professional staff for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Christina Hoff Sommers, National Advisory Board Chairman12
She is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of the recently released book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men and Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women.

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In their own words

Feminism

"And [Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution] has a theory that makes sense to me about these endless treatises by working women who just wish everyone would be nicer about their problems and conflicted feelings: 'Perhaps continuing complaints about the guilt felt by absent mothers says more than we think it does -- that those mothers feel the need to spend more time with their children whether they have bought into the separationist movement or not. Perhaps their well-publicized feelings of guilt are further proof of a social experiment run amok.'" - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, I Do Know How She Does It, 1/19/200513

"Do-Nothing feminism makes domestic incompetence a point of pride: "I just CAN'T cook/sew on a button/clean up my house...I'm just-too...BUSY!" is its neurasthetic cri du coeur, the modern equivalent of 19th-Century fainting spells." - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, Better Homes and Ladies Mags14

"In my book, Who Stole Feminism, I question the basic premise of the contemporary American feminist movement: that American women are oppressed. I do not believe that women in contemporary American society are oppressed; they do not constitute a subordinate class. I believe American women are among the freest and most liberated in the world. It is no longer reasonable to say that as a group women are worse off than men." - Christina Hoff Sommers, "Sex, Lies, and Feminism" speech, University of Chicago, January 2003.15

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Gender Roles
"Men in charge of small children are like women and parallel parking: Attention must be paid or something's going to get dented." - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, Meet Today's Dad: A Model to Avoid, National Review, 6/14/200416

"SheThinks encourages students to 'Take Back the Date' on their campus. Guys - take women out. Open doors. Buy them flowers. Women - let guys take you out. If you like a guy, ask him out yourself. Pass out IWF's Cupid flyer on your campus as a way to restore chivalry and personal responsibility among students." - part of the description of IWF's Take Back the Date campaign17

"Research suggests that women have a more difficult time divorcing sex from emotional attachment." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

"Marriage is not just a tool of patriarchy-it is an institution that generally brings higher levels of happiness, health, and financial wellbeing." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

"Young women should be aware that while pop culture and even some women's studies texts suggest that casual sex will be empowering, women often experience feelings of confusion and shame." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

"[Women's] negative emotions might also be rooted in disappointment since, as unfair and frustrating as it may seem, men are more likely to pursue relationships with women who reserve sexual interaction for marriage or serious relationships." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

"Men often prize promiscuous sex in the short term, but they want faithful wives. Through the ages, men with faithful mates have sired more children, and a taste for faithfulness will thus have been "naturally selected" for. If a man finds a woman hard to get, he will sense that she is more likely to be faithful after marriage." - Carrie L. Lukas quoting Steven E. Rhoads, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

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Sex Education
"It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, at times, the feminist movement is not remedying a lack of information about safe sex, but seeking to entirely divorce it from morality and to encourage more sexual activity." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

"The message that condoms make sex "safe" is misleading, since, as will be discussed later in this report, condoms provide only imperfect protection from sexually transmitted diseases and, of course, offer no protection at all from the feelings of regret that a woman may experience after engaging in casual sex." - Carrie L. Lukas, Sex (Ms.) Education, 2/10/2005

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Homosexuality
"Women went to college, the old joke went, to get their "Mrs." Now they can attend conferences in kinky sex and S & M, or take courses in lesbian and gay studies--and that is not a joke." - Candice deRussy, "Sex and Bondage 101"

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Economic and Tax Policy
"The death tax is an inefficient tax that encourages tax shelters and punishes people for saving- People have already paid taxes more than once on the assets that they have accumulated during their lives. It is unfair to tax them once more at the end of their life." - Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, IWF Urges Repeal of the Death Tax: Hurts Women, All Americans, 4/13/200518

"The fact is that Social Security faces real problems that can only be fixed in one of three ways: raise taxes, cut benefits, or find a way to pre-fund future benefits, such as through personal retirement accounts." - Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Not So Glamorous, 6/1/200519

"In our society, a woman has the right to choose where to live, whom to marry, whether or not to have children, and how to protect herself and her family from very real threats that exist in our country today. Women also should be able to decide for ourselves whether we want to keep putting all of our money into Social Security, or keep a portion of it in an account that we own and can watch grow- The combination of personal retirement accounts and progressive indexing will create a better, stronger, and fairer Social Security system for women." - Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, in testimony before the Subcommittee on Social Security of the House Committee on Ways and Means, 5/17/200520

Instead of encouraging the government to take and control women's money, feminists should support changes in tax law that will reduce government's burden on women and free women to make choices based on their own preferences. Women would particularly benefit from reductions in income tax rates, and from reform that gives married couples the option of filing as individuals instead of jointly." - Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Taxing Independence: The Price of Feminists' Love Affair with High Taxes, 8/24/200421

"Free trade helps make women's day-to-day lives better by offering a greater range of goods at lower prices- American women, families and consumers would reap greater benefits if more trade barriers were eliminated. The existing barriers to trade limit our choices, regulate and tax our purchases, and stifle economic growth." - Sara Cooper, IWF Visiting Fellow, Free Trade: What Global Girls Need, 12/20/200422

"'Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.' So says one of the heroes in Ayn Rand's masterpiece Atlas Shrugged. But given any opportunity, Democrats, as a rule, beat up on the rich or actually, anyone who makes a decent living. The rich are selfish, pay no taxes and steal from the regular Joes. I'm starting to feel sorry for this group of misunderstood people. Last time I checked, they pay the majority of our taxes and create millions of jobs." - Louise Filkins, Stop the Bashing!, IWF Communications Director, 7/28/200423

"By raising the minimum wage, a President Kerry would make it illegal for an employer to offer an employee a job that paid less than the set government price. As a result, employers would be able to hire fewer workers since each worker would cost more." - Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Maximum Stupidity on the Minimum Wage, 6/23/200424

"When we struggle with taxes that come with our new prosperity -- call them "success taxes" -- we are struggling not with some peripheral tax pitfall but with the core principle of the code -- progressivity. Progressivity is a success tax, but it is also the mother of all taxes, the tax that dominates our lives like no other. Progressivity institutionalizes the class warfare that politicians tell us they are waging on our behalf." - Amity Shlaes, The Taxman's Dirtiest Secret [excerpted from her book The Greedy Hand], 4/5/200425

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Contraception and abortion
"The hard bottom line to these conflicts is that if abortion is legal and ultimately a woman's decision, then supporting the child should ultimately be the man's decision -- unless he was married to the mother, which involves a contract and therefore an obligation. I can't see why the state should get involved in disputes outside of state-recognized relationships." - Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, But Dad Can't Do it All, 6/17/200526

"One of the most important of the institutions captured by the Left is the Supreme Court. For the last half century, the Court has been a revolutionary force in American culture and politics, taking the lead in remaking America. For example, in past terms, there have been decisions defining the family, protecting pornography, adopting rules rendering it virtually impossible to prosecute obscenity, refusing states the authority to support all-male military academies, creating special rights for homosexuals, limiting school disciplinary procedures, and banishing religion from public life. And, of course, inventing a right to abortion." - Robert Bork, writing for Ex Feminia newsletter, October 200027

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Citations

1 Secretary Elaine Chao, April 2001, www.iwf.org/articles/article_detail.asp?ArticleID=119

2 IWF website, www.iwf.org/about_iwf/

3 Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, Women's Forum Challenges Feminists, Gains Influence, Washington Post, May 1, 2001; Page A06. www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A25123-2001Apr30¬Found=true

4 IWF website, www.iwf.org/about_iwf/

5 From IWF's website, www.iwf.org/about_iwf/faq.asp

6 www.kudlow.com/corporate/bio.asp and www.nndb.com/people/122/000062933/

7 Abigail Thernstrom Not Allowed to See Report About Florida Voting, MassNews, July 2001, www.massnews.com/past_issues/2001/july%202001/701ab.htm

8 From IWF's FY 2003. 990

9 www.iwf.org/experts/ex_pfot.asp

10 www.iwf.org/experts/ex_bernard.asp

11 www.iwf.org/experts/ex_lukas.asp

12 www.iwf.org/about_iwf/sommers.asp

13 Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, I Do Know How She Does It, 1/19/2005, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=714

14 Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, Better Homes and Ladies Mags, 8/10/2004, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=652

15 Christina Hoff Sommers, "Sex, Lies, and Feminism" speech, University of Chicago, January 2003, http://www.iwf.org/pdf/UChicagoBrag.pdf

16 Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, Meet Today's Dad: A Model to Avoid, National Review, 6/14/2004, www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200406160920.asp

17 www.iwf.org/campuscorner/abouttbtd.asp

18 Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, IWF Urges Repeal of the Death Tax: Hurts Women, All Americans, 4/13/2005, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=748

19 Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Not So Glamorous, 6/1/2005, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=759

20 Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, in testimony before the Subcommittee on Social Security of the House Committee on Ways and Means, 5/17/2005, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=763

21 Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Taxing Independence: The Price of Feminists' Love Affair with High Taxes, 8/24/2004, www.iwf.org/pdf/taxing_ind.pdf

22 Sara Cooper, IWF Visiting Fellow, Free Trade: What Global Girls Need, 12/20/2004, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=706

23 Louise Filkins, Stop the Bashing!, IWF Communications Director, 7/28/2004, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=644

24 Carrie Lukas, IWF Director of Policy, Maximum Stupidity on the Minimum Wage, 6/23/2004, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=622

25 Amity Shlaes, The Taxman's Dirtiest Secret [excerpted from her book The Greedy Hand], 4/5/2004, www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=571

26 Catherine Seipp, IWF Visiting Fellow, But Dad Can't Do it All, 6/17/2005 www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=771

27 Robert Bork, writing for Ex Feminia newsletter, October 2000, www.iwf.org/pubs/exfemina/October2000e.shtml