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inism s failures, we have lost sight of common ground.
Like it or not, women (and men but that s the subject of another
book) still need feminism. Feminists of different ages still need each other.
The original mission social, economic, and political equality for
women remains relevant, because so much of it remains unfulfilled. Al-
though younger women, peers and allies of men in their careers and all
other realms, may not always want to acknowledge it in their bold efforts
to forge ahead, most women sense the lag. Deep down, we know. The
awareness that women are not yet the equals of men in the eyes of society
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162 SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED
transcends age. According to a March 2006 Lifetime poll, women across
three generations Boomer, Gen X, and Gen Y agreed that while it has
never been a better time to be a woman, women still face discrimination,
and men have more advantages in society. According to Lifetime, the
women interviewed in 2006 felt more strongly that men had more advan-
tages than did women who were asked this same question in 1974.6 In
spite of the articles now pouring forth about how women outperform men
in college, there is still the nagging reality that as soon as these men and
women of so-called equal standing graduate and get jobs, the men will still,
immediately, be earning more.
In many realms, gains have been made from which there can be no re-
treat. In contrast to the days when women couldn t get credit in their
names, today there are more than 7.7 million women-owned businesses
in the United States. Women are now earning more than half of all bach-
elor s and master s degrees, and 40 percent of doctoral degrees as well. We
now have our own radio network (launched in 2006 by none other than
Gloria Steinem). There are more female Muppets. Young girls flipping
through channels will now see that women can be heads of state in Chile,
Liberia, and Germany even if they still aren t here in their own country,
though the speculation about a potential run by Hillary Clinton no doubt
sends a positive message. In urban centers, among the upper and middle
class, and for white women in particular, the changes feminism has
wrought are profound.
Younger women who have experienced a degree of empowerment feel
acutely the effects of living in a world not fully transformed. But they have
no real language other than journalist Peggy Orenstein s apt word
flux for this growing sense of living between the aspiration and the re-
ality of equality.7 Today, for a young woman living in flux, the awareness
that she is not as equal as she thinks might crystallize on the job, when a
boss treats a male coworker differently or pays a man she supervises more.
More often, and more prolifically, such realizations come at home, when a
working woman (and statistically that means most) who marries and be-
comes pregnant soon realizes that her husband, who believes in egalitarian
marriage, expects her to quit her job and raise the kids full time. Antholo-
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FORTY YEARS AND FIGHTING 163
gies beginning with The Bitch in the House chronicle a new generation of
angst-ridden epiphany, but the epiphanies come without catharsis.
Friedan s wished-for second stage where men and women work together
to revolutionize the division of labor in the home seems only slightly
more visible on the distant horizon. Men do more housework today but
still, in comparison to their working wives, not much. External supports
are slow in coming. The United States is one of the only industrialized
democracies in the world without a national system of child care. Our fam-
ily leave policies leave much to be desired.
Raised with Take Our Daughters to Work Day and told that they are
valued for their talent and brains, younger women are nevertheless more
obsessed than ever with the way they look as Gen Y writer Courtney
Martin makes clear in Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening
New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. Standards for female beauty remain
impossible to meet. The Miss America Pageant has morphed into a weekly
reality series known as America s Next Top Model, where the winner not only
has to be physically flawless and skinny, but able to outfox her fellow
beauty queens by preying on their weaknesses. Although younger women
now have the morning-after pill, they will still have to fight for their re-
productive rights, equal pay, and access to top jobs in fields such as science,
engineering, and politics. Women who accuse men of sexual harassment or
rape are still publicly humiliated and disbelieved. More women still live in
poverty than men. No one growing up with the assumption and promise
of equality likes to be reminded, but the unsexy reality is that we are not
fully equal. Yet.
Antifeminist attitudes among women as well as men abound. The
postfeminist ethos of the 1990s has morphed into a populist conservatism
with stars like Dr. Laura and conservative poster girl Ann Coulter
women with call-in radio shows, columns, book deals, and Rush Lim-
baugh caliber zingers. ( I think [women] should be armed but should not
[be allowed to] vote, taunts Coulter on Politically Incorrect in February
2001.) New networks and organizations continue to spring forth on cam-
pus, with names like the Network of Enlightened Women. New critics
update the old stereotypes to fit the times. A recent book by young con-
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servative Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy at the Independent
Women s Forum, provocatively titled The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Women, Sex, and Feminism, claims, Modern feminism has strayed far
from [its] original mission. It is now associated with radical liberal poli-
tics, including support for an ever larger federal government, a European-
style welfare state, and a general hostility to traditional families. 8
Breathing new life into old fears, Lukas warns her followers that feminists
greatest desire is to usher in an androgynous age. A few decades back,
feminism s opponents held up the specter of unisex bathrooms. New bo-
geys, layered on top of the old.
Cultural and political trends toward conservatism in America that con-
solidated in the 1980s have reached new heights. Social and religious con-
servatives today are much more activist than they were in the past. There
are more of them. They have a lot more power than they have ever had.
While conservatives young and old continue to demonize feminism,
many of the gains second-wave feminists fought for and won in the leg-
islative arena have been methodically chipped away. In recent years, gov-
ernment information agencies and councils that monitored governmental
efforts on behalf of women and girls have disappeared. These include the
President s Interagency Council on Women, which was mandated to de-
velop policies for the advancement of women and girls under the UN
Platform for Action adopted by the nations of the world in 1995 at Bei-
jing, and the Office of Women s Initiatives and Outreach in the White
House, mandated with ensuring that the concerns of women are ad-
dressed in policy development.9
Under George W. Bush s administration, information routinely posted
on government Web sites, such as critical health data for women, has been
withdrawn or altered, and, instead, such sites broadcast conservative or re-
ligious beliefs about sex and sexuality. A 2004 report found that over 80
percent of federally funded abstinence-only curricula taught in sex educa-
tion courses at schools contained false, misleading, or distorted informa-
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