New Delhi: Erika Kirk, the wife of assassinated conservative politician Charlie Kirk, had over 2,000 women cheering against feminism at Turning Point USA’s first major women’s conference. “At its core, feminism is a worldview that treats many of the things that make women uniquely women as obstacles to overcome rather than divine gifts to embrace,” she said in her keynote address.
Billed as “Curated for H.E.R.” (Holistic, Empowered, and Redeemed), the Women’s Leadership Summit (WLS) promoted biblical womanhood, early marriage, motherhood, and complementary gender roles from 5 to 7 June 2026 at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter in Texas.
The summit featured high-production elements like magenta smoke cannons and energetic music, alongside the programming featuring a mix of Christian influencers, MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) advocates, former Trump administration figures, and female politicians. Attendees filled ballrooms for sessions on faith, family, and wellness. Some of the badges worn by women read ‘hot girls don’t vote for socialists’.
Kirk advised the attendees against delaying family planning for career ambitions, stating that “children, family, your husband, marriages, that is not a renewable resource,” while careers could be restarted. “Make more babies than you can afford,” she said at one point. She emphasised submission in marriage, telling women their lives belong to Christ rather than themselves.
“To the women in this room who are Christian, it’s actually quite simple. The world will say your life belongs to you. It does not. Your life belongs to Christ,” said Kirk.
“Feminism actually is a movement funded by the wealthiest evil people with the goal to destroy marriage and family,” said conservative political influencer Savanna Faith Stone, calling feminism the “biggest lie sold to women”.
Stone has previously spoken out against the suffragette movement. She also tells women that they should not vote. That one family should cast one vote—let the man of the house choose who governs your country. She calls it “household voting”.
Through her address, Stone continued to berate feminist ideas and glorify the traditional marriage structure. In line with the conservative summit’s pro-life stance, she called abortion satanic.
“Satan still rules over the earth, and he uses tools like the media to target women through emotional propaganda. ‘Oh, that’s not actually a baby. It’s just a clump of cells. It’s okay. You can just get rid of it. You can’t afford to have a baby right now. Your happiness is the most important,’” notes Stone, calling the media the forbidden fruit.
She urged the women in the audience to embrace their identity as “good wives,” insisting that it is something they embody just by virtue of being women.
“It’s all very strange for anything called a ‘leadership summit’ to feature one speaker after another casting women not as leaders at all, but as servants,” wrote Amanda Marcotte, an American journalist.
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‘Women can do it all’
The summit took place while a protest was going on outside the venue, with demonstrators clashing with supporters and police. Inside, a heckler interrupted Kirk, declaring that she protects pedophiles. Some participant responses captured the nuance of the regressive ideas propagated at the summit.
“Society has co-opted the word feminism, which should just be the equality of the sexes, which I really do believe in… pushing the other sex down which I really don’t believe in,” said one participant, Phoebe Vidacak, to CNN’s Elle Reeve.
“I’ve run three companies and have a non-profit and adopted children. So, I feel like the messages to me were that women can do it all… and how do you see that as different from feminism?” noted another attendee.
Online reactions were sharply divided; most people were mocking the summit. Clips of the more extreme quotes spread rapidly on social media, with critics ridiculing the “more babies than you can afford” line as tone-deaf amid economic pressures and the iPhone-as-forbidden-fruit analogy as overreach.
“Feminism is why she’s on stage to begin with. It’s why she has a bank account, credit cards, voting rights,” noted one of the commenters on Instagram.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)