The debates that are spawned over issues like sexual violence, abortion and contraception have a tendency to take on a tone of gender based warfare. Certainly the culture of religious conservatism rest on an assumption of male patriarchy with women reduced to a subordinate position. However, that culture would not continue to exist without the support of large numbers of women and it is actively opposed by a large number of men who are active supporters of feminist principles and goals.
As a gay man I have long seen my interest in being relieved from the discrimination which I have experienced for most of my life as being fairly closely tied to the concerns of feminism. Traditional religious conservatism is a common enemy. I support women's efforts to achieve choice and independence not only because I believe that it is just, but because I believe that it is also good for me. There are a number of progressive straight men who have their own version of this position.
On the other side of the coin there are the conservative women who are dedicated supporters of the religious right. Todd Akin became the poster boy for misogyny with his comments about "legitimate rape". He lost the election, but there was a chunk of women who voted for him. In the presidential race Obama got more total votes from women than Romney did, but the most striking split was between married and single women. The whole thing is clearly more complicated than men vs women.
Jessica Valenti, who is a feminist columnist at The Guardian has an interesting piece about the conservative women's groups who are applauding the Hobby Lobby decision.
Punching Gloria Steinem: inside the bizarre world of anti-feminist women How do you make sense of women who think the Hobby Lobby decision is 'great', college rape is 'inflated' and pay gaps don't exist? Just don't let 'em stop you
This latest crop of female anti-feminists - powerful, Washington-based organizations like IWF and Concerned Women for America - want to repeal the Violence Against Women Act and argue that pay inequity doesn't exist. These organizations, along with a handful of popular writers and authors, want to convince women that it's men who are the underserved sex. They want to convince you that inequality is just a trade-off.
Women stopping the progress of other women – especially those who don't have the power and prestige to work for DC think-tanks or pen anti-feminist books - stings much more than when men do it. That may be a double standard, or naive - I don't believe in an all-encompassing sisterhood, after all – though it does remind me of how powerful feminists really are: we've taken on not just the men in our way, but the women as well.
One of the important questions here is how much support among women do these conservative groups have. That of course is a difficult question to answer in a definitive way since women's rights are a bundle of issues and people vary considerably on the positions that they take on specifics. Abortion is probably the most consistently hot button issue and the one that gets the most attention over time in opinion polls. It is always difficult to thread some of the ambiguity that arises from how people interpret the meaning of specific questions. Here are some results by gender from a recent
Pew poll. It appears that about 6% of respondents were undecided on the matter.
The people who are absolutely opposed to abortion is all circumstances makeup only 14% of the respondents but they are equally divided between men and women. In terms of a composite pro choice/pro life position women lean just slightly pro choice, but the 4 point difference is about the standard margin of error for for such polls. Public opinion appears to still be about evenly divided on the issue and there isn't much difference between women and men.
Opinion polls are a very inexact science, but using abortion as a representative issue, it would appear that religiously conservative women represent something more substantial than political front groups who are being funded by the Tea Party. Opposing the push back from the religious right is going to require a united effort by progressive women AND men.