Feminism Unfinished

the world has changed, so have the needs and aspirations of women. In the 1920s, as this book reveals,
feminists could not have imagined the aspirations of women in the 1970s, for example. And in a diverse
country like the United States, we cannot expect different groups of women to have identical agendas. We
cannot expect poor women feeding their families on food stamps to have the same priorities as female
lawyers hoping to become partners in law firms. We cannot expect working-class women concerned with
getting sick leave to have the same priorities as college professors. We cannot expect women who face
both sex and race discrimination to develop the same priorities as women who face only sex
discrimination. This diversity shows, for example, that it is a mistake to characterize feminism as a
movement of career women. Some feminists prioritized women’s right to take employment on an equal
basis with men, while others asked for greater respect and support for women’s unpaid domestic labor—
not to mention the majority of feminists who wanted both. There has never been a single, unified feminist
agenda.
We see feminism as an outlook that is ever being reinvented by new groups of women. Feminism
necessarily changes as the world women inhabit changes.
There is a historical upward spiral here in aspirations: as new generations of women have lived with
the greater opportunities won by the campaigns of older generations, these younger women have dared to
ask for more—for equality in more spheres, for respect and better treatment by both governmental and
private institutions. At times one set of gains has revealed problems previously unnoticed. Once women
gained control over their own property, for example, they came to ask why they needed their husbands’
approval to make a large purchase or get a credit card.
Still, despite these intrafeminist changes and differences, there has typically been a bottom line, a
common denominator of “what women wanted.” Most feminists sought educational opportunity, economic
opportunity, equal rights to political participation, an end to violence against women, an end to the sexual
double standard, respect for women’s work in the home, and jobs that allowed them to fulfill family
responsibilities. The majority of feminists also worked to make these rights and freedoms a reality for all
women, through guaranteeing the economic and social security necessary to enjoy them.
In campaigning for these rights, most feminists grasped the need for women to work collectively.
When these campaigns won, women of course gained opportunities as individuals. That women can now
be physicians, lawyers, and college professors in large numbers, as well as CEOs and political leaders in
smaller numbers—this is the achievement of feminist collective struggles. One of the accomplishments of
women’s movements has been more recognition of individual women of great achievement—elected
officials, religious leaders, artists, businesswomen, and reformers. But just as tax cuts for the 1 percent
did not produce a higher standard of living for the 99 percent, so the increased number of women at the
top did not always produce gains for women at the bottom. There is no trickle-down effect. Individual
“leaning in” is not enough; the vast majority of American women have always leaned in, working as hard
as they could to support themselves and their families.
Feminism Unfinished is about a century of feminism as a social movement. The book demonstrates
something about how social movements operate: we examine not just feminism’s accomplishments but
how these accomplishments were won. Because we focus on the processes of change, readers looking for
the most famous or individually powerful women may not find them here. Leaders have sometimes made a
difference through their intelligence, charisma, and dedication, but to see how major historical change
occurs, one has to look at the activism of larger numbers of people. The feminist leaders most often met in
the mass media, for example, were often not the most influential in making large-scale improvements for
women. Besides, we want to use this book to introduce readers to some less familiar individuals. These
are the women who most resemble the rest of us: often women who were at first timid, reserved, even