Often, discussions of women’s role in America’s founding sound like a lot of excuses. After all, no women signed the Declaration of Independence. We had founding fathers, not founding mothers. Abigail Adams famously urged her husband to “remember the ladies” as he helped create our country’s new governing structure, but women’s rights were, at best, an afterthought during America’s founding.
Yet this perspective misses what makes America so unique and why our 250th anniversary is a moment that everyone should celebrate—including women. America’s founding and our Declaration of Independence laid the intellectual groundwork that made women’s full equality and flourishing possible. That framework led to an explosion of human rights, civil rights, prosperity and opportunity, all of which enabled American women to be the freest and most successful in the history of the world.
America’s founding and our Declaration of Independence laid the intellectual groundwork that made women’s full equality and flourishing possible.
Prior to the Civil War, American women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began pressing for the right to vote and the change of laws to give women full legal equality. Elizabeth organized a one-of-a-kind women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York. While she didn’t live to see success, her efforts eventually led to the 19th Amendment and women’s voting rights.
The first woman ever elected to public office in the United States was a Republican from the state of Montana. Jeanette Rankin was a dedicated suffragette elected in 1916—three years before the 19th Amendment was ratified. While her tenure was short, Rankin’s election was not an isolated achievement. Throughout the twentieth century, Republican women continued to break barriers and expand opportunities for women in public life. In 1964, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman from a major political party to have her name placed into nomination for president at a national convention. Years earlier, she had already broken barriers by also being the first woman to serve in both chambers of Congress.
The decades that followed continued to produce an extraordinary generation of Republican women who reshaped American government and public service. Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court after being appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Condoleezza Rice broke new ground as the nation’s first black, female Secretary of State, helping guide American foreign policy during a pivotal period in history. These women were leaders whose accomplishments demonstrated that Republicans champion women, as well as men, based on their merit and character.
Today, women continue to play a critical role in shaping our country. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Katie Britt, Secretary Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon, Press Secretary Karoline Levitt, and the president’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles: All these women are not only shaping our laws and national narrative, they are examples of how diverse women can lead professionally and personally.
The conservative movement, proudly, rejects the kind of identity politics that elevates people based on their sex, race or other characteristics. Yet that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t loudly applaud women who have earned their positions and are at the very top of their professions. These women show that meritocracy works.
Republicans have demonstrated that they are, in fact, the party that champions women. Democrats prioritized the perspective and sensibilities of men who claim a female identity over actual women, putting women’s safety and basic fairness at risk.
Republicans have demonstrated that they are, in fact, the party that champions women.
Conservatives rejected this as a fundamentally wrong, and insulting, perspective and took the lead in defending women as a distinct group worthy of equal opportunity and protection under the law. Conservatives elevated the voices of women across the country—female athletes like Riley Gaines, Payton McNabb, Linnea Saltz and Kaillie Humphries—as they continue to fight to restore common sense and sex-based rights in sports. In contrast, Democrats insist that equality is not based on biological reality, but on self-identification, forcing women to surrender hard-won protections in the name of inclusion.
The conservative principles that are championed by Republicans are fundamentally pro-woman: Women thrive in a safe, secure society—that includes a strong border and a robust economy offering plentiful opportunities for people to pursue their own visions of happiness. Women have always had a home in the Republican party and continue to take a leading role in shaping the movement for the future.
Carrie Lukas is the president of Independent Women. Follow her on X at @carrielukas.