Nation: Who's Come a Long Way, Baby?

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Civil rights for women is an old cause being revived with a special kind of vehemence in an age of generalized protest and turmoil that questions nearly all established institutions and many traditional values. The prospect of the hand that rocks the cradle also rocking the boat can be frightening. But it is also freighted, as the best of the radicals insist, with a potential for enormous good for both sexes. As Kate Millett says: "We really don't have many fatuous hopes of taking over. We would like, very much, a fair shake. We are each half of a person, we are each less than we could be. If we did not have these rigid sexual roles, we would all have so much more room for spontaneous behavior—for doing things that we feel like doing, for following our own instincts, for being imaginative, for being creative. The great thing about it all is that we could not only change this, but in the process, really improve everything else as well."