HOW TO BE A LEADING WOMAN, ACCORDING TO TURNING POINT USA

One of the biggest conservative Christian advocacy groups in the United States, Turning Point USA, hosted a Women’s Leadership Summit earlier this month in San Antonio, Texas. If you’re a liberal feminist like me, you might wonder what kind of “leadership” advice an organization like this would want to offer young women. Turning Point USA’s founder, Charlie Kirk, is well-known for advising young people to prioritize marriage and children above all. After he was assassinated last year, his wife Erika Kirk took over leadership of Turning Point USA, and the message has remained largely the same, with some allowances for the reality of dating and life. Based on media interviews with the 2,000-some attendees, marriage and family are the priority, and conservative values are just as important.

Feminism is often misinterpreted as being dismissive of marriage and family. The feminists I know often discuss the joys and complications of motherhood, which are unmatched by anything else, including careers. At the same time, the left doesn’t often see acolytes of Turning Point USA and others like them as leaders. However, Katie Gaddini’s new book, Esther’s Army, finds that these women are organized and strongly influence our elections. In fact, young women’s votes for Trump jumped seven percentage points, to 40%, in 2024 compared to 2020.

One of the darlings of the women’s conservative and MAHA movement is Alex Clark, who hosts a Turning Point USA podcast, Culture Apothecary. But as an unmarried woman in her thirties, she’s been plagued by accusations of hypocrisy for putting her career first. What does a person in her position do? She leans into her singleness by giving a speech entitled “Stewarding Your Season of Singleness,” telling all the single women in the audience that she understands they are not building a career instead of a family: “you’re building a career because what the heck else are you supposed to be doing in the meantime?”

This reminded me of a woman I met in my first job after college. We were both in our early twenties, but she was a member of the Mormon church, working part-time while attending law school. She told me she wasn’t planning to practice law because she wanted to have a big family and stay home with her children. I was baffled. Why would someone go to law school for no reason? But this isn’t a far-fetched practice in conservative circles – it’s a modern spin on the MRS Degree coined in the 1950s.

Clark advised women not to waste “years waiting for your life to begin,” and instead trust God and build a beautiful life, serve other people, and become the kind of person someone wants to marry – travel, learn new things, laugh with your friends. While some of this might actually sound vaguely feminist, Clark followed it immediately with an engagement announcement. I suppose the implication is that she is now someone who can be trusted to give this advice, having achieved the goal of marriage, but something about it also made me feel sorry for all the women in the room who identified with her as someone who also had a hard time finding a mate. It was as if she’d pulled the rug out from under them. Her fiancée joined her on stage while Clark showed her ring off to her audience, asking them, “how did he do?” They walked off to Taylor Swift’s Wi$h Li$t.

One of the things that stood out to me from Clark’s speech was her claim that feminism tells women that careers should be our entire identity. I consider myself fairly well-versed in feminist politics and culture, and I would never say that a career must be the center of a progressive woman’s life. On the contrary, the overarching theme of feminism is that the woman gets to choose how she lives her life. For some women, that might mean their career is the most important thing. For others, it might be family, a partner, pets, travel, or some combination of those things.

Aside from Clark’s engagement announcement, the other big news was social media tradwife influencer Savanna Stone sharing her disappointment in Trump. But what interests me more is her willingness to give up her vote in favor of a “more conservative country.” Since too many women vote for liberal policies, she reasons, the only solution to create the political future she wants is to take the vote away from those pesky liberal women. While CBC News made it clear that the idea of a “head of household” (i.e. male) vote was a distinctly fringe idea at the Summit, the privilege underlying it is rampant.

The Summit speakers have massive followings on social media and big paychecks to support a lavish lifestyle and sprawling family. For most people, being a wife and mother does not also mean fame and fortune. And for a lot of mothers, giving up a career, or at least a job, is simply not an option. These are privileged women who, I assume, don’t have abusive husbands or live in desperate situations, have plenty of money, and whose “power” is given to them by men only because they are evangelizing a lifestyle that is simply not accessible to every woman at the Summit, let alone the United States. Stone is twenty-one years old. I think it’s highly likely she changes her mind about a few things in the years to come. And if she does, she’ll have the money she needs to finance a new life. What about the others she’s convinced to follow in her footsteps, but without the safety net of influencer income?

I don’t espouse any of the ideas listed on the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit website. I cringe at the young women who attended and said the only measure of success in their lives is getting married and having babies. But they can do whatever they like. That’s feminism. I just wish more of them could see that many of these speakers are selling a pyramid scheme, and that personal religious values should never dictate the policies all Americans live by.