Gender feminists are especially disapproving of the lives of traditionally religious women

such as evangelical Christian women, Catholic women, or Orthodox Jewish women, whom
they see as being conditioned for highly restricted roles. Surely, they say, it is evident
that such women are subjugated, and the choices they make inauthentic. As Gloria
Steinem explains it, the appeal of religious fundamentalism for women is that "the
promise is safety in return for obedience, respectability in return for self-respect and
freedom -- a sad bargain."(a)
That is a harsh judgment to make about millions of American women. Ms. Steinem is of
course free to disagree with conventionally religious women on any number of issues,
but she is not morally free to cast aspersions on their autonomy and self-respect. The
New Feminism is supposed to be about sisterhood. Why are its most prominent
practitioners so condescending?
Steinem herself knows a thing or two about how to recruit adherents to a cause by
promises of "safety" and "self-respect." The feminist orthodoxy she portrays promises
safety in a sisterhood that will offer unhappy or insecure women a venue where they can
build self-esteem and attain an authenticity enjoyed by no other group of women.
The traditionally religious women of today, be they Protestant Christians, Orthodox Jews,
or observant Catholics -- emphatically do not think of themselves as subjugated, lacking
in self-respect, or unfree. Indeed, they very properly resent being described that way. For
they are perfectly aware that they have all the rights that men have. If they choose to
lead the lives they do, that is their affair. 1

Christina Sommers continues, For their part, traditional women might try to
persuade the feminists of the merits of the religious way of life. Mostly however,
gender feminists are content to dismiss and even jeer at the religious women
without engaging or confronting them in a respectful dialogue and it is not
surprising that the latter have grown increasingly impatient with their feminist
critics.2

Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism: How Woman Have Betrayed Woman (New York, NY: Simon &
Schuster, 1994), 260.
(a)
Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (Boston, MA: Little & Brown, 1992), 260.
2
Ibid., 261