For years, mainstream political culture has been dominated by a leftist narrative that is based on denial of a fundamental truth: Western civilization as the single greatest force for women’s advancement in human history. Independent Women is therefore building a movement to show women that America is worth loving, the West is worth defending, and they have a vital role in carrying both forward.
They’re pursuing this case for civilization in policy and the public square because, after decades of leftist claims that women’s empowerment is among their top priorities, the U.S. ranks shockingly low on this issue. According to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index—produced by the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security and the Peace Research Institute Oslo—the United States currently ranks 37th out of 177 countries when measuring women’s well-being.
If the institutional control exerted by the Left and top-down policy were the way to secure women’s flourishing, we would have seen drastically different outcomes. But in the Left’s failure, there is a huge opportunity: IW has conducted research showing that the U.S. is falling short in women’s flourishing not because of too little government intervention, but because of too little order, too little cohesion, and too few culturally grounded norms. They are therefore now advancing a four-part policy platform designed to reverse decades of government-control focus and rather lean into civil society and opportunity as the keys to genuine progress:
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Safety is a top priority. IW is pushing to restore support for local law enforcement, strengthen sentencing for violent and sexual crimes, and invest in community protection programs that reinforce public trust, not undermine it.
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Family Breakdown Harms Women Most. IW is advancing policies that create opportunity and allow civil society to flourish.
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Cultural Clarity, Not Gender Chaos. IW has already led national efforts to restore sex-based protections in law and policy, preserve single-sex spaces, and reject policies that conflate sex with self-declared gender identity.
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Sovereignty and Shared Identity Matter. Reassert national identity by securing borders, teaching American civic principles in schools, and restoring shared national rituals and narratives that bind citizens together.
Since 1992, IW has built support for conservative principles among women and advanced policies that actually enhance opportunities and well-being. Led and staffed by some of the strongest voices in the public square, IW shows that conservatives are forward-looking, empathetic, smart, fun, and pro-woman. As a result, they’ve had an outsized impact on policy discussion and debate by creating uniquely effective storytelling that shapes how people encounter and think about policy impact in the news, online, on TV, on the radio, and elsewhere.
One of the primary ways they will do this is through Independent Women Features—IW’s newly launched platform for grassroots storytelling and original journalism. Women Features not only tells compelling stories; it provides storytellers with the training to serve as ambassadors prepared to raise conservative women’s voices in the media, to policymakers around the country, and to the public.
These stories feature the flourishing-based narratives that have earned the support of Impact Fund members for decades, mirroring Bradley’s values: Free Enterprise, Education Freedom, Civil Society, and the family as the setting of true flourishing.
This initiative is sorely needed. The Left has used academia and the media to push anti-American and anti-Western ideas for decades. So Independent Women Features now highlights the stories showing that women are disproportionately harmed when our borders are overrun, when law and order are abandoned, and when we allow anti-Western forces to take over. The vision for this bold initiative is striking.
Picture the growing range and popularity of alternative media forcing women’s magazines and daytime television talk shows to feature conservative women alongside liberals, framing their personal stories as aspirational. By creating an ecosystem of powerful advocates for the values IW and the Impact Fund have long advanced alongside one another, we can convey conservative women’s humanity, diversity, and commitment to making the world a better place.
Beginning with IW’s own million-plus audience, and the ongoing support of Impact Fund members, their stories will become harder to ignore, further loosening the Left’s grip on the hearts and minds of women in the West.