Why Aren’t Feminists Applauding the Highly Accomplished Women on Trump's SCOTUS Short List?

President Trump has already narrowed down his Supreme Court short list to five people, including two women. Even if Trump doesn’t nominate a woman, the fact that he has included women on his list is just as admirable as when Obama appointed Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. Yet because the media and progressives view these women as conservative, they aren’t applauded or welcomed into the tribe of patriarchy-hating feminists. They are shunned and scorned because of their ideology.

This is, of course, absurd and feminists might even deny this bias takes place, but the pedigrees of the women on Trump’s short list are nothing short of impressive, to say the least. So impressive, in fact, that these women should earn applause from any self-described feminist who really believes in workplace equality and opportunity.

These are some of the women on Trump’s short list:

After law school and a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Allison Eid served as solicitor general of Colorado. A year later, Colorado Governor Bill Owens appointed Eid to serve on the Colorado Supreme Court.

Britt Grant was involved in politics, working for Congressman Nathan Deal. Following that, she served in President George W. Bush’s administration. After law school at Stanford, she clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, also on President Trump’s short list.

After an intense question and answer session with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joan Larsen was appointed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was more than qualified: After attending Northwestern University School of Law, she clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and was later appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Finally, the female front-runner on Trump’s list, Amy Coney Barrett, was recently appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals — the first woman from Indiana to reach that position. She was a professor at the Notre Dame Law School and was also a former clerk for Justice Scalia. When grilling her during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein growled about Barrett’s Catholic faith: “The dogma lives loudly within you and that is a concern.”

You know what’s more disconcerting than a handful of intellectual, ambitious, over-qualified women on Trump’s Supreme Court short list? An entire swath of women who call themselves feminists — who want to advocate for female equality and opportunity —  who fail to recognize importance this moment holds. This very obvious bias against women — who are talented, smart, and balance work and family — because they hold a politically conservative ideology or embrace a personal religious faith is why more and more women shun the term “feminist.”