Recently I spent two days at the hub of conservatism in Washington, D.C. Nope, not the White House, but the Heritage Foundation for the Network of Enlightened Women’s National Conference—also known as NeW—where a group of college-aged conservative females gathered to discuss and learn about policy and leadership. And yes, Kellyanne Conway was there.

As a 24-year-old liberal woman who cried watching Hillary Clinton lose the election live at New York’s Javits Center, this wasn’t a room I ever thought I’d find myself in, and my preconceived notions ran rampant—all I could think was that I didn’t have the right clothes, let alone the bandwidth for the mental gymnastics it would take to talk to women about Donald Trump without combusting.

On the day of the conference, swathed in a pastel tweed blazer and kitten heels, I found myself in a room of 100-plus excited, chatty, diverse women. I saw girls with nose rings, in large hipster glasses, with dreadlocks. Few to none were wearing pearls.

The morning kicked off with NeW’s President and founder Karin Agness Lips, who congratulated everyone for their commitment to politics, assuring the crowd that they were the future of their party. Then, she asked the room a question: "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" A palpable silence took over, as Agness Lips dove right into criticism of contemporary feminism, arguing that it’s become an embodiment of the liberal agenda, as opposed to the pursuit of female equality.

I looked back out at the same group of girls who had traveled from across the country to attend this very conference—all because they believed they deserved a seat at the table to discuss politics—and they were all nodding their head in agreement. It became clear that while garden-variety girl power was alive and well here, feminist is predictably a dirty word.

The Ladies of NeW on a Break Between Talks with Leading Republican Women Instagram/@enlightenedwomen

That became extra-clear when conservative pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson took the stage to share findings from her book The Selfie Vote, in which she explores ways cultural trends are influencing how the millennial generation is voting. She shared one statistic that left me shook: Only 19% of Republican women think that the feminist movement represents their values (Echelon Insights, Kristen Soltis Anderson).

On a break from the presentations, over my first ever Chick-fil-A lunch, I started asking the young women about their problems with modern feminism. There was some initial pussy-hat bashing and Lena Dunham dragging, but by the end of lunch I found myself engaged in complex conversations about their hopes for female empowerment within the conservative party.