Speaker Mike Johnson's sexism is fueling an unexpected rebellion within the GOP caucus.
Marjorie Taylor Greene at a press conference on Capitol Hill on November 18, 2025.
(Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
House Speaker Mike Johnson has strong opinions about the differences between men and women. In a recent podcast, Johnson's wife Kelly: marked what her husband likes to say is, “The difference between men and women is that…men can compartmentalize things.” To express this idea metaphorically, Kelly Johnson compared the male brain to waffles and the female brain to spaghetti.
This strange foray into gender essentialism may explain why Mike Johnson is so reluctant to share power with his female colleagues. There are currently 33 Republican women in the House of Representatives, but not a single woman has been elected committee chair (one woman holds the more ceremonial position of committee gavel). These figures confirm complaint retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that “there are a lot of weak Republican men” who are “afraid” and “always trying to marginalize strong Republican women.”
And Greene is not alone in her anger. There's an unexpected rebellion brewing in the Republican Party among women who are hardly feminists but still angry about constantly hitting the glass ceiling and at Johnson for cutting them off.
Johnson's estrangement from these women is all the more strange because he needs their votes. Its majority is historically narrow; Republicans have 220 seats, just two more than the 218 needed. And as Johnson's predecessor Kevin McCarthy discovered, losing even a small handful of supporters is a big deal. enough for a GOP speaker to lose his job these days.
Despite his precarious hold on power, Johnson achieved often encountered with their female colleagues. He feuded with three congresswomen over the release of the Epstein files: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert (along with the only male Republican who favored the release, Thomas Massie). Johnson also battled Congressional Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Elise Stefanik over a congressional ban on stock trading. And six Republican women broke from Johnson's ranks to support the conviction of GOP Rep. Corey Mills over alleged misconduct toward women: Mace, Boebert, Greene, Luna, Kat Cammack and Harriet Hageman.
Even as women rise through the ranks of Johnson's Republican Party, they are treated with condescension. Representative Lisa McCain is a Johnson ally and chairwoman of the Republican Party conference. Johnson has praised her saying that she is the person he trusts most to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Johnson clearly prefers women as chefs rather than as colleagues.
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It's hard not to see a pattern in these fights: Johnson is constantly at war with Republican women. This causes a serious split in the party. Like NBC reports:
A number of senior Republican women are leaving the House for other opportunities, contemplating retirement or leaving Congress early, raising some concerns that the ranks of GOP women could be depleted in the next Congress.
Taken together, it is a sign of growing frustration among some House Republican women, who are less represented in leadership and have only one committee-selected gavel. Two House Republican women who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive domestic issues said they feel they have been overlooked, that their priorities are not always taken as seriously under Johnson's leadership and that they believe that could be the reason for some withdrawals and public fights with him.
Trying to rebut accusations of sexism, a Johnson ally responded with a surprisingly tongue-in-cheek comment that female critics should be grateful for what he had done. How New York Times reports“A senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of continuing intra-party feuds, said that after Mr. Johnson provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide called “a sham job and a sham position,” he expected her to be more accommodating.”
Johnson's behavior is not just a quirk of his own personal misogyny, but reflects a broader backlash against professional women within the Republican Party. Donald Trump's culture war policies have emboldened reactionaries seeking to roll back the gains women have made in the workplace.
The Heritage Foundation, an influential epicenter of the resurgence of far-right cultural politics in the Trump era, recently hired Scott Yenor to head the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. Yenor defenders legalize sexual discrimination so that employers can “support traditional family life by hiring only male heads of household.” He argues that “the heroic woman prioritizes motherhood and femininity and celebrates the men who make it possible.”
In keeping with the new zeitgeist, online social spaces are awash with kitschy celebrations.translators” who conform to gender norms, avoid work and delight their men with home cooking and submissiveness.
In a widely read article in Compact published in October by right-wing polemicist Helen Andrews argued that the trend of female workers being the majority in many workplaces—what she called the “Great Feminization”—represented a threat to civilization because women were incapable of rational, selfless thought. Making the same arguments that Mike Johnson made to his wife, Andrews said, “Men tend to be better at separating people than women.” According to Andrews, “the rule of law will not survive when lawyers become a majority of women.” Ross Douthat interview Andrews spoke at length about her views on New York Times. original title the transcript read: “Women ruining the workplace?” This was later changed to a less confrontational: “Has liberal feminism destroyed the workplace?”
The civil war among congressional Republicans shows the obstacles these gendered responses will face. Indeed, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her allies are hardly ardent feminists. They generally oppose reproductive freedom and other gender equality measures. But conservative as they may be, these women also have the usual ambitions of politicians, and indeed of most professional people. They expect to be given a chance to rise in their field and have a seat at the table.
The feminism of these Republican women is narrow and selfish. This reminds famous meme of 2015“I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs a woman who voted for the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces” party. Ironically, Greene never expected that an overtly sexist party would limit her freedom as a woman.
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A more generous approach to this conflict is that it represents a learning opportunity. Republican women understand that feminism is what they need.
The subtle and anemic feminism of Marjorie Taylor Greene is still preferable to the vicious return to patriarchy espoused by Johnson and Andrews. At least with Greene it is possible to find enough common ground to establish the minimum rules for a just society. With Johnson and Andrews, not to mention the swine chauvinism of Donald Trump, all that is on offer is to turn women into second-class women forever. For all their shortcomings, Republican women deserve praise and support as they confront the deep misogyny of their party.
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