At Women's Legislative Days, I heard two 30-something speakers, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, and their talk (along with their books) changed the way I think about Generation X!
They talk above 3 waves of feminism: the First Wave battled for the vote and for the Equal Rights Amendment; the Second Wave worked to establish reproductive freedom and job equality, and worked on the leftover goal of the Equal Rights Amendment. The young women of today, the Third Wave, feel as if they live their feminist lives without clear political struggles.
So, what are the goals of the Third Wave? They continue to work on issues identified by the Second Wave: sexual harassment, domestic abuse, the wage gap, and the pink-collar ghetto of low-wage women's work. In addition, they have more modern problems: equal access to the Internet and technology, HIV/AIDS awareness, child sexual abuse, self-mutilation, globalization, eating disorders, body image, and sexual health.
I am now convinced that our GenX sisters are, in fact, feminists; they just express it differently than the Second Wave did. Now, how do we, as AAUW members, persuade these women that we can be a vehicle through which they can express their feminism?
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2 comments:
I'll second that! Passionate, committed, issue-oriented feminist activists under 30 exist! But I run into them as employees of our coalition partners, not members of (what one called) "legacy" organizations.
I agree! So the $64K question is what are our coalition partners doing that we need to be doing?
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