Update 11/10/17: In an op-ed for Fox News, Nance blasts her critics and and says that she doesn’t want the job: “I would be honored to serve my nation and President Trump; however, I do not feel God is leading me to leave Concerned Women for America at this time.”
President Trump is expected to nominate Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, to be his ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, Politico reported late last week.
Planned Parenthood likened the move to “putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.”
At CWA, Nance has led efforts to oppose reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, instead promoting a conservative view of feminism she calls “feisty and feminine.” The “war on women,” to Nance, is “actually a civil war.”
Nance is firmly opposed to abortion rights—she has said that legal abortion is worse than the Holocaust—but also enjoys taking a contrarian, anti-feminist stand on a number of other women’s rights issues. Nance opposed a 2012 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; CWA complained that the bill would create “new protections for homosexuals.” She also led the charge against the approval of a new National Women’s History Museum on the Mall, claiming that it would “indoctrinate” visitors by giving too much space to pro-choice activists.
This summer, when Google fired an engineer who circulated a memo arguing that women are scientifically less suited to tech work, Nance blasted the company for yielding to “political correctness” and said it had “done a disservice to women by shutting down an important dialogue about ideas such as nature vs. nurture and everything else that goes into the cause of a gender gap in tech.”
She dismissed the arguments of Sandra Fluke, an advocate for insurance coverage of birth control, saying that Fluke could afford birth control if she had “just had less beer in college.”
In a memorable 2015, Fox News appearance, Nance faulted the movie “Frozen” for empowering women “at the cost of tearing down men.”
Nance opposed the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, and warned that allowing gay troop leaders in the Boy Scouts would “put our young sons at risk.” She has urged parents to keep their children at home during the annual Day of Silence that’s meant to counter anti-LGBT bullying in schools. In 2010, under Nance’s leadership, CWA refused to participate in the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) because it was being sponsored in part by a group of gay conservatives. She once compared gay people’s marriages to “counterfeit money.”
When the Trump administration rescinded guidelines for schools on transgender inclusion, Nance said that even LGBTQ rights advocates should support the decision because “there is simply no reason to burden all children and force those who feel uncomfortable with this to ‘just deal with it’ because of political correctness.”
Nance took the helm of CWA after a stint in the Bush Federal Communications Commission, where she was an advisor on “broadcast indecency.” Before that, she founded a “traditional families” group called Kids First Coalition; in her role there she appeared multiple times on Fox News to promote Bush’s reelection, identified only as a “suburban stay-at-home-mom.”
Although Nance was an ardent Never Trumper at the start of the Republican primaries, signing a letter from a group of anti-choice activists who said they were “disgusted by Mr. Trump’s treatment of individuals, women, in particular,” she later got on the Trump train, joining the candidate’s “pro-life advisory council.”
Recently, Nance marveled that her group has “unprecedented” access to the White House under Trump. Now, she stands to benefit even more from Trump’s presidency.
