Patricia Lynn Murray is an American politician and educator who has served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate since 2023. She is the senior United States senator from Washington, a seat she has held since 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, Murray served in the Washington State Senate from 1989 to 1993. She was Washington's first female U.S. senator and is the first woman in American history to hold the position of president pro tempore.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is a congressional caucus affiliated with the Democratic Party in the United States Congress. The CPC represents the most left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party. It was founded in 1991 and has grown since then, becoming the largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives.
Thomas Carl Hartmann is an American radio personality, author, former psychotherapist, businessman, and progressive political commentator. Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, The Big Picture, between 2010 and 2017.
Lynn Morley Martin is an American businesswoman and former politician who served as the 21st United States secretary of labor from 1991 to 1993, under President George H. W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party, she previously represented Illinois's 16th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1991. Before her election to Congress, Martin served in both chambers of Illinois General Assembly; in the State House of Representatives from 1977 to 1979, as well as the State Senate from 1979 to 1980.
The Independent Women's Forum (IWF) is an American conservative, non-profit organization focused on economic policy issues of concern to women. IWF was founded by activist Rosalie Silberman to promote a "conservative alternative to feminist tenets" following the controversial Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas in 1992. IWF's sister organization is the Independent Women's Voice (IWV), a 501(c)(4) organization.
Samantha Jane Power is an American journalist, diplomat and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. Power is a member of the Democratic Party.
Eagle Forum is a conservative interest group in the United States founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 and is the parent organization that also includes the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund and the Eagle Forum PAC. The Eagle Forum has been primarily focused on social issues; it describes itself as pro-family and reports membership of 80,000. Critics have described it as socially conservative and anti-feminist.
Rosalie "Ricky" Silberman was an American conservative activist who, with Barbara Olson and others, co-founded the Independent Women's Forum.
In many countries, women have been underrepresented in the government and different institutions. This historical tendency still persists, although women are increasingly being elected to be heads of state and government.
Kyrsten Lea Sinema is an American politician and former social worker serving as the senior United States senator from Arizona, a seat she has held since 2019. A former member of the Democratic Party, Sinema became an independent in December 2022.
Heidi I. Hartmann is an American feminist economist who is founder and president emerita of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a research organization created to conduct women-centered, public policy research. She retired from her position as President and CEO in 2019.
Katherine Kersten is a conservative columnist who wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Juliette N. Kayyem is an American former government official and author. She is host of the WGBH podcast The SCIF. She is a national security analyst for CNN and is a weekly guest on Boston Public Radio. She is the Belfer Lecturer in International Security at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. She is a former candidate for Governor of Massachusetts and a former Boston Globe columnist, writing about issues of national security and foreign affairs for the op-ed page.
Some variants of feminism are considered more conservative than others. Historically feminist scholars tend to not have much interest in conservative women but in recent years there have been efforts at greater scholarly analysis of these women and their views.
Thomas Roland Tillis is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from North Carolina, a seat he has held since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, Tillis served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2007 to 2015, and as its speaker from 2011 to 2015.
Carrie Sheffield is an American columnist, broadcaster and policy analyst. Formerly a reporter for Politico and The Hill, she is author of a forthcoming memoir from Hachette Book Group.
Women in conservatism in the United States have advocated for social, political, economic, and cultural conservative policies since anti-suffragism. Leading conservative women such as Phyllis Schlafly have expressed that women should embrace their privileged essential nature. This thread of belief can be traced through the anti-suffrage movement, the Red Scare, and the Reagan Era, and is still present in the 21st century, especially in several conservative women's organizations such as Concerned Women for America and the Independent Women's Forum.
Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199 (1977), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that the different treatment of men and women mandated by 42 U.S.C. § 402(f)(1)(D) constituted invidious discrimination against female wage earners by affording them less protection for their surviving spouses than is provided to male employees, and therefore violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case was brought by a widower who was denied survivor benefits on the grounds that he had not been receiving at least one-half support from his wife when she died. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the court, ruling unconstitutional the provision of the Social Security Act which set forth a gender-based distinction between widows and widowers, whereby Social Security Act survivors benefits were payable to a widower only if he was receiving at least half of his support from his late wife, while such benefits based on the earnings of a deceased husband were payable to his widow regardless of dependency. The Court found that this distinction deprived female wage earners of the same protection that a similarly situated male worker would have received, violating due process and equal protection.
Clara Mortenson Beyer was a pioneer in labor economics and workers rights. She worked under Frances Perkins at the United States Department of Labor during the New Deal era, and was instrumental in implementing minimum wage legislation via the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Marcela X. Escobari is a Bolivian-American government official and diplomat currently serving as the Assistant Administrator of the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since January 13, 2022. She previously worked as a Senior Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where she led the Workforce of the Future initiative.
