Network of enlightened Women
organization
The Network of enlightened Women (NeW) is an organization for culturally conservative women at American universities. Started as a book club at the University of Virginia in 2004, NeW seeks to cultivate "a community of conservative women and expands intellectual diversity on college campuses through its focus on education."
NeW members meet to discuss issues ranging from politics and gender to conservative principles. Since its founding, NeW has expanded to over 20 colleges campuses nationwide.
Founding
NeW was founded in September 2004 by Karin Agness Lips as a book club at the University of Virginia (UVa). Agness Lips founded the club after finding the feminist environment at UVa hostile to conservative women.
Activities
While NeW chapters continue to read books together to become better educated, their members also seek to engage their larger campus communities by hosting speakers, holding debates, promoting chivalrous behavior through a "Gentlemen’s Showcase," and challenging the controversial play The Vagina Monologues.
The national organization also hosts an annual national conference in Washington, DC each summer.
National conference
Each summer, NeW leaders, NeW supporters and those interested in learning more about NeW gather in Washington, DC for the annual NeW National Conference. The 2010 conference brought more than 60 women together, and Christina Hoff Sommers (author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men) was the keynote speaker.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7001149. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Network of enlightened Women” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.