The Washington Times profiles the Independent Women’s Forum and President Nancy Pfotenhauer as IWF moves forward into the future.


Nancy Pfotenhauer is not afraid of challenges. The New Jersey native was chosen to be, she says, “the only Yankee” on the University of Georgia homecoming court — and dared to express her politics in front of 80,000 Bulldog fans at halftime in Sanford Stadium.

“I wore a Reagan button,” Mrs. Pfotenhauer says of the 1985 event. “It was the very first political statement of my life.”


Now, as president of the Independent Women’s Forum, Mrs. Pfotenhauer faces a new challenge: Keeping an organization born in the “culture wars” of the 1990s relevant in the post-September 11 age.


Founded in 1992 as a conservative antidote to left-leaning feminist groups, IWF made its reputation as a smart and sassy bunch during the Clinton era.


The Clinton presidency “was sort of like hitting a pinata without a blindfold,” Mrs. Pfotenhauer says. “The nation was confronted with the hypocrisy of the feminist movement, which claimed to speak for all women but supported the philanderer in chief….That was the news every day — did he or didn’t he, and to whom?”


The IWF ladies reveled in their contrarian stance, wearing as badges of honor the epithets hurled at them by critics.