From September 17-19, nearly 200 women convened in Rochester, NY to find a better way forward for women at the 2026 Women’s Convention. The Convention culminated at Seneca Falls, the cradle of the American women’s rights movement, with a new Declaration of Independence heralding the “founding of A NEW WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, one built upon the reality of interdependence among women, men and children and responsive to the moral and technological challenges of our times”.
These women were diverse in their religious, cultural, and philosophical backgrounds. Most were American, but a few Canadians and Brits made their way into the mix. Many disagreed about a host of issues affecting women. Yet these women found common ground in their conviction that both the dominant modern feminism and the rising antifeminist backlash are failing women. The participants were united in their belief that both our country and the American women’s movement have departed from their founding principles by privileging radical autonomy.
The Convention’s Declaration beautifully set out an understanding of women that recognizes both their equal dignity with men and their unique physiology and social contributions. It is worth reading the Declaration in full, but particularly notable were the Declaration’s rejection of many of the pet causes of secular liberal feminism: the intentional destruction of babies in utero, trans ideology, and “rights” to engage in pornography and prostitution.
I was honored to be one of the women at the Convention. While it is far too early to tell if this new women’s movement will succeed in its aim (or how we might even measure success), I am also acutely aware that the women who gathered at the first women’s convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 had no guarantee of success, either. Only time will tell if this new movement makes it into the history books, but my experience at the Convention convinced me that this moment marks a historic opportunity for women, and for America.
This opportunity is inextricable from the future of America’s foreign policy. Serendipitously (or, dare I say, Providentially), Providence’s newly broadened focus acknowledges this reality. As Paul Miller wrote in his recent post on Providence’s next chapter, “foreign policy is downstream of national identity” and “we cannot write coherently about American foreign policy without also writing about the American experiment more broadly.” America’s broken understanding of women and their role in society poses a grave threat to American identity and the American experiment. Getting “the woman question” right is a vital prerequisite to getting America right – and by extension, American foreign policy.
While I could draw on the words of nearly every Convention speaker to support this thesis, I found Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s remarks (delivered virtually) to be particularly relevant. Hirsi Ali’s life story is remarkable, and the interview traced her trajectory from a Somali girl victimized by radical Islamist ideology, to her escape and evolution into an atheist, liberal feminist, and finally to a Christian who continues to care deeply about women’s rights, but rejects the secular, liberal feminist consensus.
Hirsi Ali raises two primary objections to the secular liberal feminist project. (While some influential feminists do not identify as “liberal feminists,” I think it is fair to use this term as broadly synonymous with the dominant modern feminist movement.) First, it fails to recognize and protect women from the threat of radical Islamist ideology, and second, it fails to recognize the reality of biological women and protect them from trans ideology. Both of these failures harm not only American identity and the strength of American society, but ultimately weaken America’s ability to craft a foreign policy based in moral realism.
Take the regnant feminist movement’s reluctance to condemn radical Islamists’ degradation of women. (While Hirsi Ali seems to identify radical Islamism with an authentic interpretation of Islam, here I do not offer any judgement of Islam more broadly.) Secular liberal feminism is profoundly uncomfortable with condemning anything that claims cultural or religious inspiration – unless, of course, that culture belongs to Western Civilization or that religion is Christianity.
What is more, this strain of feminism relies on an uncomfortable alliance with radical Islamists in order to accomplish its political goals. Emblematic of this was the failure of many feminists to promptly and unequivocally condemn the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, despite Hamas’ use of sexual violence against Israeli women. Such moral ambivalence substantially weakens America’s moral authority and understanding of its own values. Not only does it handicap our ability to name and combat Islamist violence within our own borders – think of those on the left who still insist that 9/11 was America’s own fault – but it also makes it impossible to think clearly about America’s relationship with countries and non-state actors that do not share our basic convictions about the human dignity of both men and women.
Modern feminism’s embrace of trans ideology also has downstream effects on American culture and foreign policy. Many Americans no longer recognize “woman” as an objective category rooted in biological sex. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson famously refused to define the word “woman” at her confirmation hearing, and we have neutered terms, such as breastfeeding and menstruating, that describe uniquely female experiences.
If we no longer understand ourselves as human beings differentiated according to male and female biological sex characteristics, we have lost our grip on reality and our ability to think of identity as something to be received, not simply created by the radically autonomous self. And that has implications beyond women’s sports leagues and locker rooms. When we lose the ability to define individual identity in coherent or objective terms, it becomes much harder to cultivate a sense of collective or shared identity—such as familial, cultural, or national identity—that is grounded in a shared sense of history, objective morality, and belonging. And if we don’t know who we are, as an American people, how are we supposed to figure out how our country should relate to the rest of the world?
To be clear, I don’t think that feminism’s embrace of trans advocacy is the only, or even the main factor, contributing to the breakdown of national identity. I also believe it is vital that we cultivate compassion toward those who struggle to feel at home in their bodies. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the ways that trans ideology, as mainstreamed by feminism, has led to a breakdown in the way we cultivate a sense of identity and belonging.
These two issues only scrape the surface of the ways that the secular and left-wing version of feminism has undermined not only women’s interests, but the American experiment as a whole. Both men and women have important roles to play in reversing this harm, and already movements such as the pro-life movement and the women’s sports movement are combating some of the false assumptions of modern feminism.
However, it will take a women’s movement to undo the damage and set forth an alternative vision of women’s flourishing that is founded in our history and the values of our forebears, while responding to the moral and technological challenges of modernity. (Just imagine a men’s movement attempting a similar feat – the backlash would be overwhelming, and it would be over before it started.) A better way forward for women is a better way forward for America. I can only hope that one day we will look back on the 2026 Women’s Declaration of Interdependence as a pivotal moment in history that paved the way for renewal, both within America and in America’s engagement with the world.