Monday, October 15, 2007

"The bigger question may be what it symbolizes. "Younger women run from the word 'feminist' without quite knowing why, or what the word has stood for," writes Deborah Siegel in "Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild." "The movement's architects are aging, some are dying, and the names of others are hardly known." According to a 2005 CBS News poll, while 69 percent of women said the women's movement had made their lives better—compared with 43 percent in 1997—only 24 percent said they considered themselves feminists. Almost 80 percent were uncertain who Gloria Steinem is. Steinem, whose name was once synonymous with ERA-era feminism, is in her 70s, and feminist icons Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin and Shirley Chisholm have died in the past few years."