NWP members picket the White House in 1917. The banner reads, "Mr. President, How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty."

This morning I had the pleasure of talking with Fran Luck on WBAI-FM , a Pacifica affiliate in NYC. Fran hosts the “Joy of Resistance,” a show that covers “the ongoing and world-wide struggle for the full liberation of women–as it continues to unfold dynamically in every country and culture on the planet.” She had read my original post about Sarah Palin and wanted to interview me about the parallels I saw between Palin’s “feminism” and the Nazi militants, about whom I wrote part of my dissertation. It was a great conversation.

I’m a conversation junkie. Nothing gets my mind going like talking with a knowledgeable person. That’s part of the reason I love Tikkun Daily. I interact with smart, informed folks who are just as interested as I am in the topics I write about.

Fran’s interest in my post was piqued by the fact that a group of women calling themselves “feminist” existed during the Third Reich. She brought Abby Scher into our discussion, because Abby has been researching women on the American Right for quite a while and edits “The Public Eye,” a quarterly publication that tracks right-wing movements.

Abby added fascinating information about the history of this kind of “feminism” in the U.S. It originated here both in the suffrage movement and in evangelical Christianity. One of the American organizations that represented this type of perspective was the National Woman’s Party, which after women won the vote

became the home of more privileged women who supported a free market and were vigorously anticommunist. A NWP member Vivien Kellems, a small businesswoman from Connecticut, even launched a campaign against the federal income tax in the 1940s, and her anticommunist women’s group took the country by storm in opposing what members saw as the dangerous socialism of the New Deal.

Evangelical Christianity also had deep ties to feminism, according to Scher, since in

Championing women’s direct relationship with God, these early evangelicals suggested that men [were] not their lords and masters.

Palin follows directly in the footsteps of these women and reproduces the contradictions that were inherent in their politics. She’s a “free market feminist,” believing that individual women and girls should be treated equally under the law and not suffer from discrimination in the workplace or in schools. What she wants, Scher suggests, is equal “rules of the game,” not actual equality for women. Palin would like opportunity for women like herself — educated, middle to upper-middle class women — to succeed in a patriarchal society. Clearly such women are the only ones who might “elevate themselves above the masses,” since the rest of us need affirmative action, family leave laws, and other government programs to make sure we have equal opportunity. But these are exactly the types of “big government” initiatives that Palin and these other “feminists” oppose. They believe that it’s up to the individual woman to compete in the market, no matter what her background or resources.

Interestingly, Palin has experience in both of these historical movements. She was raised in a pentacostal denomination that has had many women pastors, a faith tradition that doesn’t agree with most of the Christian Right when it echoes (Saint) Paul in saying that women should keep silent in the church. She’s also a member of Feminists for Life, an organization that is home to prominent conservatives supporting women’s advancement as well as the banning of abortion. On the stump for Vice President, she said that she was going to break the glass ceiling in government.

The other thing that fascinated me in Scher’s article was that Palin’s “feminism” has a following among YOUNGER conservatives. As a result of the economically challenging times they live in, these young people take for granted that women will be working outside the home, because without two incomes most families can’t make it these days. As a result, they’ve redefined what it means to be a “traditional woman.” No longer is she a stay-at-home mom. Instead

Traditional now seems to be someone who embraces the belief in a heterosexual nuclear family and a conservative Christian embrace of “family values.”

What Fran brought to the conversation was the understanding that in every one of these situations — whether it’s conservative “feminism” today or the Nazi “feminism” of the past — the women involved are operating in a space strongly circumscribed by patriarchy. This “box” changes over time, but whether it’s in the Republican Party or the Nazi Party, the free range allowed to such “feminists” is always small and at any moment can be restricted even further, depending on the needs of the male leadership. In the case of the Nazi “feminists,” this was glaringly obvious. They had a “fool’s freedom” to push for women’s advancement for a few years until publication of their journal was suspended in 1937 by the Nazi Women’s Bureau. Similarly, Palin is operating on the Right within organizations that allow women like her a minimal arena to exercise their leadership when it advances the needs of those organizations. The Republicans need more of the women’s vote. When they’ve secured it, women’s issues — in this limited form — will be a thing of the past.

I’ll let you know when the WBAI show goes online.