"Is the Tea Party a women's movement?" asks Hanna Rosin in Slate. She's a little skeptical of using the label "feminist" for a "movement that uses Michelle Malkin as a poster girl," but points out that there are more women than men in the party, and that it has "become an insta-network for ambitious women." It's not what some liberals might expect:

Some are aspiring candidates who could never get traction within the tight, local Republican Party networks. Some are angry-mom-activist types who, like their heroine Sarah Palin, outgrew the PTA. But some would surprise you with their straightforward feminist rage. For the last few years Anna Barone, a Tea Party leader from Mount Vernon, N.Y., has used the e-mail handle annaforhillary.com: "The way they treated Hillary is unforgiveable, and then they did it to Sarah Palin," she said. "I've been to 15 Tea Party meetings and never heard a woman called a name just because she's powerful. I guess you could say the Tea Party is where I truly became a feminist."

Then, too, "if the Tea Party has any legitimate national leadership, it is dominated by women." To what extent is this grassroots movement a vehicle for women and feminism?

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Heather Horn