Rene Denfeld - The New Victorians: A Young Womans Challenge to the Old Feminist Order

I was born a year after the National Organization for Women was created in 1966, and I was a small child while many of the battles for womens rights were being fought. Like most women of my generation, I can not remember the time when abortion was illegal. I can not remember a timethough my mother tells me it is truewhen women were expected to go to college to snag a husband, not to earn a degree, when working women were confined to pink-collar jobs such as waitressing, when reliable birth control was unavailable, and when women were kept ignorant about their bodies and their sexuality. It was a time that translated into simple and devastating scenarios: a young woman denied birth control and dying from a back-alley abortion, a woman graduating from college, only to find the path of higher learning led directly to the typing pool, a ten-year-old schoolgirl wishing she could take shop class with the boys, only to be herded into home ec to make Jell-O and practice silverware arrangements. It was a time when, it is difficult to believe, sexism was not considered a problem or even recognized as a word in the public vocabulary.

We have it much better now than our mothers ever did. Abortion was legalized in 1973. There was the long fight to pass the ERA, which may have failed but which firmly planted the notion of equal rights in the public mind. There was the creation of NOW and the Womens Equity Action League in the 1960s, and the battles they won against sex discrimination in the workplace and schools. There was the womens health movement, the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the introduction of rape shield laws (which limit admissibility of a victims sexual history), the founding of battered womens shelters, and the emergence of women in business, law, and politics. There were Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Germaine Greer, Kate Millet, and many others. It was the second wave of feminism, and its impact on womens futures was profound.

For women of my generation, feminism is our birthright. While sexism may still permeate society, we know what it is to live without excessive confinement. We are the first generation to grow up expecting equal opportunity and equal education, as well as the freedom to express our sexuality. We are the first to assume what feminists had to force society to accept against its deeply ingrained prejudice: that we are the equals of any man. This belief may translate into the pursuit of a career or it may mean demanding respect for raising childrenwomen of my generation believe in the right to choose.

Given, then, this huge debt we owe feminism, why do so many women my age refuse to join the womens movement? Why do we adamantly reject the feminist label?

While numerous polls show that American women of all ages overwhelmingly support feminist ideals, these polls also show that they largely avoid calling themselves feminists and in many ways have abandoned the movementeven though most feel there is still work to be done. A 1989 Time/CNN survey reported that a majority of women believed feminism had advanced womens rights but that only 33 percent considered themselves feminists. A whopping 76 percent polled said they paid little or no attention to the womens movement.