When Donald J. Trump eulogized Schlafly at her funeral in September 2016, he cast both himself and her as underdogs — perhaps reasonably. Mr. Trump looked like the most long shot presidential nominee in living memory. Schlafly, who gave him a rare early endorsement, had in the 1970s slayed the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to give women equality under the Constitution — a seeming shoo-in, until she got involved.
By 2016, much of American life had turned nightmarish for someone like her.
Gay marriage: widely accepted. Abortion: legalized. Gender-neutral bathrooms: commonplace on many campuses. Many women no longer measured their success in marriage and children, but in financial independence and personal fulfillment.
These days, though, her arguments ring anew in our ears, as a new generation of conservative women challenges feminism’s gains.
Today, anti-feminists hold powerful roles in Washington. Social media has gone frilly with tradwives. Their reasoning echoes Schlafly’s: Homemakers enjoy special status, protected and provided for by their husbands. Why give it up?
Decades before battles erupted over unisex bathrooms for transgender people, Schafly warned that the Equal Rights Amendment would spawn co-ed bathrooms. Long before “America First” and “stop the steal,” the ultra-isolationist Schlafly accused shadowy “kingmakers” of conspiring to nominate “America Last” candidates for president. She tarred feminists as radicals, just as her heirs do now.
To combat the E.R.A., abortion and gay rights, she mobilized formerly apolitical evangelical Christians, helping to build the coalition of religious conservatives that propelled Ronald Reagan to victory and eventually ousted social moderates from the Republican Party.
The political divisions that defined those 1970s debates “only got more pronounced over the years,” leading to today’s hyper-polarization, said Marjorie J. Spruill, the author of “Divided We Stand.” “And Schlafly’s tone had a lot to do with it.”
Schlafly’s victories came wreathed in paradoxes: She presented herself as a model wife and mother, breastfeeding all six of her children, yet she had resources (her husband, a lawyer, came from wealth) and a housekeeper that allowed her to run political campaigns and churn out books, newsletters and commentary. While exalting homemaking, she lobbied (unsuccessfully) for a top post in the Reagan administration.
Calmly, she deflected accusations of hypocrisy, saying that she had raised her children before embracing what she called her “hobby” — politics. Career and homemaking, she said, came “at different times in my life.”
Feminists never tire of leveling similar charges today, against women like Erika Kirk, the conservative activist who now leads the influential organization started by her late husband, Charlie Kirk; and Katie Miller, the prominent Republican political operative who promotes motherhood as women’s highest calling.
Yet many young women are veering further left, and their conservative peers aren’t necessarily sticking to homemaking, either. At a recent Turning Point USA conference for conservative young women, several speakers openly discussed balancing family with high-powered careers. You could see Schlafly’s influence. You could also see feminism’s.
