Playing “Femball”
CWA and IWF as Women's Organizations
This chapter explores the representational strategies of the CWA and IWF, and documents the extent to which conservative women's organizations rely on the relationship between gender identity and representation to further their missions. It shows why CWA and IWF consider the presence of women in positions of political leadership integral to the construction of their political legitimacy. This translates into their putting forth women to speak to the media and to lobby members of Congress, in part as a foil against the perceived threat of feminist hegemony. These actions emphasize the significance of gender identity to them, even as they scoff at feminists for doing the same. By engaging in tactics they simultaneously impugn, they make evident moments of contradiction but explain these contradictions through the political context in which they operate.
Keywords: conservative women's organizations, Concerned Women for America, Independent Women's Forum, representation, gender identity
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .