The War Against Feminism

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Will the shortage of young women in the movement cause feminism to fade away because it can't replenish its troops? Gloria Steinem says no. Young women have never provided feminism's shock troops, she says, and to assume otherwise reflects a male model of activism that has never applied to women. "I wasn't a feminist in my 20s either," she says. Where men tend to get more conservative as they get older, "it's always been the older women who are more radical than the younger women." Her reasoning is that young men have nothing to lose by being rebellious. "Women have more social power when they're young, and also they haven't experienced what's wrong with the world yet. They haven't been in the labor force. Aging, hitting the middle- management ceiling happens 10 years later. The red-hot center of feminism has never been on campus -- it was always somewhere else."

The rejection of the label may, as Faludi argues, demonstrate the insidious effects of the backlash. But it may also reflect the failures of the movement. Paula Kamen, 24, author of Feminist Fatale, is a fan of Faludi's. But she urges that "in this age, the women's movement has to look in the mirror." Like some other critics, Kamen thinks that Backlash lets the women's movement off too easily. "It isn't all media conspiracy."

Large majorities of women have consistently credited feminism with improving their lives and winning them access to public life, jobs, credit and educational opportunities. But that access brought hard choices. "When women were all outsiders and men were all insiders, the goals were easy," says Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman. "Barriers were broken. But changes that depended on new social policy never were made. The part of the change that would make it easier for women to work never got put in place. We still don't have child care or family medical leave. Today women are working very hard, and they are tired."

Contrary to Faludi's backlash thesis, the signs that women are having second thoughts are not purely an invention of the media. In 1985, given the choice between having a job or staying home to care for the family, 51% of women preferred to work, according to the Roper Organization; by 1991 that number fell to 43%, and 53% said they would rather stay home. It is certainly possible to see this self-questioning not as a sign of weakness but as a sign of strength. "It's not a sense of defeat. But it's saying, 'I have many possibilities, and this is just what I prefer,' " contends Karlyn Keene, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Any social commentator who shatters myths and exposes hypocrisy has performed a useful service, and Faludi is no exception. She has inspired men and women to take a new look at the messages they absorb, messages that act as barriers to understanding or to justice. But it is also appropriate to argue, as founding feminist Betty Friedan does, that feminism also needs to "transcend sexual politics and anger against men to express a new vision of family and community. We must go from wallowing in the victim's state to mobilizing the new power of women and men for a larger political agenda on the priorities of life. We need to confront the polarization. We're at a dangerous time." Such conciliatory rhetoric is not backsliding. It too is a call to arms.

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CREDIT: TIME/CNN POLL