AFTERWORD
We chose to name our book Feminism Unfinished because the movement has not ended. Women’s
subordination is an ancient human practice, integrated into nearly every major religion and nearly every
economic system. Women’s subordination has been so deeply embedded—socially, economically,
culturally, politically—that it will take many more generations to overcome it.
Our book has shown that American feminism over the last hundred years took many forms and that
feminists had varied priorities and strategies. Some feminists worked in woman-only groups, some in
organizations with men. (And many feminists were men.) Some focused on the workplace, others on
healthcare, others on the law, others on personal life. Some organized demonstrations; others fought
battles in court, helped pass new laws, wrote articles, went on strike, or circulated petitions. For some
feminists, being a woman was a primary identity; for others it never was. So it is not surprising that there
have been many women’s movements and they haven’t all agreed. At times, this lack of unity has held
back social change, but at other moments the multiplicity of feminisms has been a strength: diverse
movements of women have influenced each other toward a fuller concept of what women’s equality and
freedom might mean.
Since the women’s suffrage amendment was adopted in 1920, most legal restrictions on women have
been abolished: women now serve on juries, fight in the armed forces, and can apply for any job or to
attend any educational institution, for example. Women can wear what they want and love whom they
desire.
Perhaps the biggest gains have been in women’s transformed expectations. Fewer women in
heterosexual couples expect to do all the housework; fewer women expect to stay in abusive
relationships; fewer women want to swear to obey their husbands; more women expect sexual pleasure;
more expect to plan their pregnancies and childbirths; and more women have grown up believing that they
can and are entitled to do anything a man can do.
Of all these gains, it is important to ask, who benefits? The answer is, by no means only feminists. The
majority of employed women have gained greater opportunities and higher wages because of the sustained
efforts of feminist activists. Nonemployed women have become fewer, not only because of feminism but
also because fewer men are able to support families single-handedly; those women who do not work
outside the home benefit from greater recognition of domestic labor as work. Most children have gained a
freer childhood, with somewhat less pressure to conform to gender ideals. More men now experience the
pleasures of fatherhood and find they enjoy the more egalitarian partnerships and intimacy that women
want. Lesbians have benefited greatly from the fact that heterosexual marriage is now a choice, not an
economic and social necessity as it once was. All lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have
benefited from the feminist rejection of gender and sexual conformity and the feminist insistence that
sexual pleasure is a human right, not a source of shame.
Even people who consider themselves anti-feminist today have gained enormously from feminism.
Few gender-conservative women would want to be barred from driving, excluded from schools and
professions, required to give birth to more children than they can care for, or see their daughters
prevented from achieving their full potential. Many people who do not consider themselves feminists
actually agree with much of the feminist agenda.
Yet despite the gains made by feminist movements over the last century, inequality between men and