| Abstrakt: |
The founders of 1960s and 70s second-wave feminism imagined a revolution in which equality between the sexes would surely have been realized by the dawn of the twenty-first century. While that movement largely succeeded in toppling educational and professional barriers, legalizing abortion, and transforming conceptions of sex/gender both in academia and in the wider culture, numerous obstacles to gender equality remain. One challenge for "third wave" feminist scholars and activists is to bridge the gulf between older and younger feminists, who often lack understanding of one another's experiences and perspectives. This paper speaks to that challenge by studying college students' attitudes toward feminism. Drawing on 2010 survey data of 170 undergraduates at a northeastern public university and 13 in-depth interviews with students from this sample, I explore the intersections of age, gender, nationality, and race with regard to feminist ideology. My preliminary findings indicate that (i) young men continue to resist gender equality, (ii) young women express greater concern for balancing career and family than their male counterparts, and (iii) the "third wave" women's movement has a marketing problem. The paradox of the second-wave is that it was successful in so many respects that young women and men coming of age today often assume that gender equality is a fait accompli. Additionally, the cultural "backlash" (Faludi 1991) against feminism that emerged during the Reagan-Bush decades continues to have an impact on young people's willingness to identify with the "feminist" label. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
