Susan B. Anthony Revived

Accuracy in Academia ^ | September 1, 2010 | Natalia Angulo

[AccuracyAcademia]

New York—The Susan B. Anthony List held an event on the 90th anniversary of women’s right to vote entitled “A Conversation on Pro-Life Feminism,” which attracted a wide variety of feminism enthusiasts. SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser opened the academic discussion at the Yale Club of New York by telling guests that incidentally 2010 had been dubbed the “year for pro-life women.”

Dannenfelser gave a quick history of the organization, which calls itself the “voice of pro-life women in politics,” and explained that their aim is to advance, represent, and mobilize pro-life leadership. She then turned the discussion over to the group of panelists.

Acting as the event’s moderator, associate professor of law at George Mason University, Helen M. Alvaré, described the rise in female leaders in the public sector as a “reclaiming of feminism” in the original sense where being pro-family, pro-woman, pro-life underpinned feminism as integral beliefs.

Her answer for propelling this movement forward was a change in the current vocabulary of feminist jargon that would explain the proper role of women as feminine, nurturing, intelligent mothers and workers. “Essentially,” Alvaré said, “there needs to be a legal and cultural shift that supports motherhood, women, pro-life feminism as complementary to contemporary ideals.”

Jennifer J. Popiel, Ph.D. in European History and assistant professor of history at St. Louis University, said that “life is the wealth of society,” to quote Jane Addams. Popiel is a foremost intellectual and cultural women’s historian. She explained that from the outset feminist activism it has not been a monolithic movement.

Popiel displayed a series of caricatures from early Ladies’ Home Journal from which a general consensus can be drawn, both of depictions by feminism supporters and opponents, and that is that “woman’s strength lies in their uniquely nurturing sense.”