(CNSNews.com) -
A conservative watchdog group has
published a critical examination of
America's feminist organizations,
alleging that one of the most prominent
feminist groups wildly inflates its
membership numbers and that another,
originally formed to encourage girls
to play sports, ended up advising
girls how to sue for discrimination.
Kimberly Schuld,
a research fellow at the Capital Research
Center, said she wrote The Guide to
Feminist Organizations as a reference
tool for media and government officials
interested in investigating the feminist
agenda and its funding. The book is
broken into five chapters: Activists
and Advocacy; Young Women and Girls;
Working Women; Health and Abortion;
and, Think Tanks and Research.
"One of the
other things I wanted to do with this
book," Schuld said, "was
show the very close and, sometimes,
incestuous relationship between the
groups and how really one group feeds
off of another or is a shell of another."
In order to expose
such relationships, Schuld said she
researched the 35 most prominent feminist
organizations in America in terms
of their "desire" and their
"mission" to influence public
policy through their political activity.
For each of those organizations, she
created a profile of their missions,
projects, memberships, financial information
and major donors.
Schuld said she researched
each group's Internal Revenue Service
tax returns and cross-referenced them
against IRS tax returns for charitable
foundations. Further, she checked
each group's tax returns against the
charitable giving reports and the
annual reports of corporate foundations
"in order to compile a more complete
picture of how these groups get their
money."
Schuld said a thorough
examination of the National Women's
Law Center (NWLC) provided a typical
example of how feminist organizations
raise their money.
The NWLC, according
to its website, was established in
1972 to "protect and advance
the progress of women and girls at
work, in school, and in virtually
every aspect of their lives."
This quickly led to the NWLC fighting
for Title IX women's athletics funding,
Schuld said.
"The Women's
Sports Foundation (WSF), which was
originally started to encourage girls
and women to play sports, became political
and associated itself with the National
Women's Law Center," she added.
"Now, they advise young high
school age girls that if they want
to file a lawsuit for discrimination,
they should call the National Women's
Law Center."
According to Schuld,
the WSF "casts out the net"
to catch female athletes for the NWLC
to place on the witness stand. "And,
if you look at the National Women's
Law Center's tax returns, they are
pulling in a pretty hefty income from
settlements in lawsuits," she
said.
In addition to exposing
the financial strategies of feminist
organizations, Schuld's book reveals
that a "disconnect" exists
between the groups and American women.
For example, she
said the National Organization for
Women (NOW) claims it has 500,000
contributing members, but an examination
of the group's finances doesn't support
that figure.
When Schuld combined
her analysis of NOW's finances with
"inside information" obtained
from unnamed former NOW officers,
she said the group could not possibly
have more than 57,000 contributing
members. Plus, NOW doesn't have the
staff to maintain a database of 500,000
active members, she said.
"The truth is
they don't have even 57,000 members,
but yet the media prints, 'Kim Gandy
and the National Organization for
Women with their 500,000 members says
...blah, blah, blah," Schuld
said. "Well, Kim Gandy doesn't
have 500,000 members. She lies about
it and nobody asks her what the truth
is."
Yet, according to
Schuld, the political influence of
feminist groups such as NOW has grown.
Efforts by CNSNews.com
to reach the National Women's Law
Center and the National Organization
for Women for comment were not returned.
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