Inside Candace Owens plans to dominate women's media

The conservative influencer is launching a multi-platform women's media brand, book club and fitness app aimed at targeting young mothers

Decades ago, women's media was dominated by print magazines that doled out fitness tips, marriage advice, and housekeeping guidance. Heteronormativity ruled, and a woman's place was at home, raising a family.

These media outlets shaped the cultural landscape for women for decades, but by the turn of the millennium, the internet was making them obsolete. Mommy bloggers and feminist thinkers were using the internet to challenge societal norms and traditional notions of motherhood, while ushering in a new era of feminist media.

Candace Owens sees herself as the face of the pendulum swinging back. She champions traditional values and “anti-feminist” ideology on platforms adapted for the digital age. Today, she launched a new website and media platform called Club Candace, where she will push content espousing these ideals.

Owens plans to build Club Candace into a sprawling multi-platform women-focused media brand. Her YouTube videos and podcasts will be hosted on Club Candace, along with exclusive content available behind a paywall. In addition to the self-help, lifestyle, pop culture, and political commentary content on the site, Owens is launching a new book club and fitness app, which will provide women with community and ‘80’s-style at home workout videos. She aims to target millennial and Gen Z women, especially young mothers.

Owens has been called “Wendy Williams meets Alex Jones”

In Owens' view, the digital media industry has abandoned these women. After the traditional women's magazine industry crumbled, a generation of digital media companies sold millennial women on female empowerment and girlboss corporate feminism—Lean In-style articles that encouraged women to climb the corporate ladder while juggling a family life. But recently, more women have become disillusioned by this promise. Owens recognizes an opportunity to sell them something different.

"I think a lot of women are really unhappy, and I think they're unhappy because we kind of were raised in this culture—and I'm speaking for millennials and the generation below—to reject tradition," she said. "You're taught to think that tradition is a throwback to misery and we should be so grateful that we're in the workforce, and we can be like men and compete with men. I'm one of those people who does not believe that that is what fulfills a woman."

There has been a significant resurgence of anti-feminist media aimed at promoting traditional gender roles and a homemaker lifestyle to women in recent years. Tradwife influencers like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman have surged in popularity, amassing millions of followers across social media. Peter Thiel-linked Evie Magazine launched to sell far-right ideals to Gen Z women. And a growing network of podcasts and app-based platforms such as "The Homemaker's Club" encourage women to adopt conservative values.

Owens’ content already plays well in this demographic. Her podcast is frequently among the most-listened to on Spotify, amassing over 204 million total podcast downloads. Her YouTube channel has garnered more than 3.5 million subscribers, her videos reach millions on Instagram, and she also reaches millions across X and Rumble, a right-wing video platform.

Many tradwife influencers and media personalities preach against women having to work full-time jobs despite making their media careers their own full-time jobs. Owens says that while she personally chooses to work and run her own business, it's not what she thinks women should spend their time on. “Obviously, I have a career,” she said, “but it's not a thing at the end of the night that brings me joy, it's my children and my husband and my marriage.”

@suhadabitphotography / “I was anti-feminist before it was cool," Owens said.

Much of the audience for this type of conservative content is white, upper middle class women. But Owens thinks that the appeal can go wider. She said that her podcast has seen "an explosion of Black listeners" recently. "It's been really interesting to see that demographic shift," she said. "[These women] are coming to terms with the fact that I was right about a lot of this stuff."

Owens initially built her platform as a single woman, commentating on political topics of the day. She railed against progressive movements throughout the second half of the 2010s, such as Black Lives Matter and Me Too. In 2019, she married George Farmer, a British entrepreneur and former CEO of the right-wing social media app Parler. She moved to Nashville and the two now have three children together with a fourth on the way. Owens said motherhood has transformed her, and she has become more interested in speaking to and connecting with other moms.

"When you're a mother, you're not just having these conversations for the sake of debate," she said. "You're deciding upon your children's future. So I think what's naturally happened is, I've been speaking a lot more about topics that women and moms are more interested in."

Club Candace is also a chance to redefine her brand outside the confines of the Daily Wire, a conservative media organization from which Owens was pushed out last March after “months of tensions between her and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro over her promotion of various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” according to Mediaite. Owens has been extremely critical of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. “No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide. I can’t believe this even needs to be said or is even considered the least bit controversial to state,” Owens posted on X in November 2023.

While she will continue to cover foreign policy and politics, she says she wants to focus more heavily on topics directly affecting mothers' lives. "Everything that I do is like just talking to a friend on the phone," she said. "It's like, what would I speak to my sisters about? It's not the same topic, every day."

To coincide with the launch of Club Candace, Owens is bringing back her popular web series "Shot in the Dark" which will air exclusively on her new platform. The first episode covers sudden infant death syndrome and vaccines.

"Women have a spiritual power about us, we are more connected to our children than our husbands and men are,” Owens says in the first few minutes of the episode. “And yet, we'll listen to a quote unquote expert tell us something. We will take our child to something that is called a wellness appointment and we bring them home and they're sicker."

The appetite for anti-vaccine content among mothers is growing as widespread skepticism toward public health grows, especially among liberals. The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which seeks to defund public health protections and disease research and sell an individualized view of health that centers heavily around personal responsibility, has become popular through networks of suburban moms, especially those in upper middle class and wealthy areas. Owens called the rise of MAHA "fortuitous" and said that she's being "inundated with emails" from mothers seeking health-related content.

"The women that follow me are making an effort," Owens said. "I'm not selling to women that they need to be a size two. You can be healthy and wear size 10 jeans. I know how difficult it is for some women to step back after pregnancy. But, if you know that you can set your alarm 50 minutes earlier and go for a walk, I'm your girl."

Her new fitness app will target these women with ‘80s-style at home workout videos. The app will be available later this year or early next. "I'm constantly having children and so I've gotten into mom fitness culture," she said. "I decided I should create a workout app that's really geared toward the busy mom and moms that are postpartum."

Owens called the rise of MAHA "fortuitous"

But while Owens claims to espouse a pro-motherhood ideology, she is against a slew of popular policies that support working mothers. She doesn't believe in any universal childcare or flexible work schedules for working moms. She is against hormonal birth control and has called it and IUDs “unnatural." She is also vehemently against all paternity leave and opposes “lengthy paid maternity leave” for mothers. "I'm a small business owner, why should I have to pay for my employee to stay home and have children?" she said. "No, my answer to that is no."

"Before feminism," Owens explains, "you stayed home and you had your family around you, and your parents helped you, and your sisters helped you, and it took a village. There was life before feminism. The government is not your mommy and daddy. You gotta figure stuff out."

Owens recently spoke about the Daily Wire's leave policies when discussing the resignation of another female conservative influencer from the Daily Wire, Brett Cooper. “The Daily Wire has a generous parental leave policy… and, of course, as the company has grown the policy has become more generous," a Daily Wire spokesperson said. Owens is preparing to take another maternity leave shortly when her fourth child is due in a few months. (Owens said that all of the leave she’s taken has been unpaid.)

It's unclear if Owens' contradictions will play well with mothers. An overwhelming majority of Americans, especially women, support paid maternity leave. Paid maternity leave improves maternal and infant health, numerous studies have found. Increases of paid maternity leave result in corresponding decreases in rates of infant mortality. One study found that the introduction of paid maternity leave in five states led to a significant reduction in low birthweight and preterm births, especially for Black mothers.

Owens is vehemently against any sort of paid maternity leave.

And while Owens says she wants to cover mainstream issues affecting mothers and women today, she has found success in rallying her audience around conspiracies that attack women. She has railed against Blake Lively and Amber Heard. Her latest investigative series is focused entirely on French President Emmanuel Macron's wife Brigitte Macron, who Owens believes was born a biological man. The Macrons delivered Owens a 100-page legal letter, disputing her claims and calling her content "defamatory and highly damaging in attacking the integrity and the credibility of a president."

Owens has responded by doubling down. “You see, Mr. Macron–both Misters–in my world, I bank on the people,” Candace said in a response. “I always bank on the regular people. You have no idea the army of people we can unleash.” She called on mothers to leverage social media to investigate the French president and his "alleged wife."

With Club Candace, Owens hopes to replicate what other conservative influencers like Tucker Carlson have done by going direct. "I don't think corporate media works anymore at all," she said, "even small-time corporate media."

She said that when independent media was emerging, people thought they'd have to be aligned with a bigger brand or network to build their audience and monetize effectively. "I'm proof that you don't," said Owens. “Tucker Carlson is proof that you don't. Joe Rogan is proof that you don't. The future is going to be independent, full stop."

Update: After publication Owens said that she’s actually for some very limited paid maternity leave, just not “lengthy” leave. Updated to clarify.

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