The RIGHT WOMEN: A Journey Through the Heart of Conservative America - Hardcover

Sharpen your pencils, please, and check off all that apply: conservative American women (a) favor school prayer; (b) are anti-abortion; (c) teach their children the pledge of allegiance; (d) work only in the home; (e) spurn the political and cultural advances made by feminists. If you checked any of these, The Right Women should blow your assurance out of the water.

After crisscrossing America to research this often surprising, intriguing book, avowed feminist Elinor Burkett found it impossible to pigeonhole conservative women. In Washington, young Republican "cigar and martini bimbos" help gut welfare and affirmative action; in Montana, a militia supporter home schools her kids; around the country, "Kitchen Militia" anarchists use fax and phone to expose government corruption and women entrepreneurs plot ways to deep-six onerous regulations. The only thing uniting these women is a determination to radically curb or dismantle present-day American government. Ironically, many of these conservatives wield power because of the feminist movement they disdain, but use it to crush liberal stepping stones that favor government support for women's rights. Although Burkett skims over complexities--suggesting, for example, that women have pretty much achieved parity with men--her book paves the way for true dialogue. --Francesca Coltrera

Despite feminist predictions that women's liberation would forge a national sisterhood steeped in common values and goals, today's most outspoken voices come from women who ironically embody the ideal of independence even as they denounce the principles of "old" feminism. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, Elinor Burkett takes readers into the lives, minds, and hearts of conservative women, from prominent politicians like Elizabeth Dole to gun-toting militiawomen. Neither an attack on feminism nor a defense of antifeminism, The Right Women is an evenhanded and lively exploration of a movement that is rewriting the rules, not only for women, but for American society as a whole.