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The Future of the Women's Movement: Resuscitation or Rebirth?
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10711 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1986 |
3,898 Words |
| Author
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Sarah E. Petersen
Sarah E. Petersen is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of U.C.
Berkeley and has studied at Boalt Law School and Harvard
Divinity School. |
A recent article in the New York Times Magazine by feminist Betty Friedan proposes "How to Get The Women's Movement Moving Again." Is the women's movement dead or stagnant?
This is her second attempt in recent years to redirect the movement that her initial book The Feminine Mystique launched. Her follow-up book, The Second Stage, preceded the current article.
This years' bitter fight within The National Organization for Women (NOW) which Ms. Friedan founded (the contenders being Eleanor Smeal and Judy Goldsmith; the battle being over its presidency) coupled with the return of NOW to the already-failed political strategy of the Equal rights Amendment, symbolizes the dead end direction of those who style themselves the "women's movement."
Ms. Friedan diagnoses the problem in her works: feminists of the NOW variety, steeped in the rhetoric and strategy that worked a decade ago, are caught in a time warp. Ms. Friedan, to her credit, is larger than the solutions offered by the organization she "mothered" in 1966. In 1985 she chose to attend the United Nations World Conference of Women in Nairobi rather than the strife-torn NOW convention intentionally scheduled for the same time in New Orleans. Ms. Friedan held international seminars under an African tree while Maureen Reagan, the conservative President's daughter, worked the convention hall inside.
While NOW worries about marching Washington for the ERA and feminists complain of the lack of interest shown by younger women who have benefited from past feminist activism, modern women are trying to
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