and nowhere.”^32 That is, feminism has become ubiquitous—everywhere—as its ideals and goals have
been woven into every aspect of contemporary life, yet feminism can seem hard to locate—nowhere—in
its diffuse and fragmented focus. We are also living in a time of intense contradictions: while women have
made tremendous gains since the 1960s, we still live in a “half-changed world,” to quote Generation X
journalist Peggy Orenstein. For those who had “been girls during the heyday of the women’s movement,”
the expectations of what it means to be female—in careers, in relationships, in families—had undergone a
radical transformation. Yet the well-intentioned message that “we could ‘be whatever we wanted to be’”
ignored the many structural barriers and sexist attitudes that were still firmly in place.^33 The women’s
movements described in chapters 1 and 2 achieved many legal, economic, and social gains, to be sure, yet
sexism and gender discrimination have continued, albeit sometimes in new forms that make them difficult
to address. As Columbia Law School professor Susan Sturm has described it, the earlier women’s
movements confronted “first generation” patterns of gender bias, such as overt legal discrimination and
exclusion; such bias could be addressed by changing the law, for example, by formally including women
where they had previously been excluded. According to Sturm, since 1990 we are more likely to confront
“second generation” gender bias, which takes the form of informal policies, practices, attitudes, and
patterns of interaction; this form of gender bias tends to appear natural and neutral but is, in fact, grounded
in beliefs about women’s inferiority to men. For example, there is no law prohibiting women from
pursuing careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, yet girls and
women are frequently discouraged from pursuing an education in STEM fields by subtle and omnipresent
cultural messages—including those sent by women themselves—that such fields are the domain of men.
(Sometimes such messages are not so subtle, as when Mattel issued a Teen Talk Barbie that said “Math
class is tough” in 1992.)
Living in a “half-changed world” has left women in a sort of limbo, not sure how to navigate the new
realities that exist alongside traditional demands. More careers are open to women than ever before, but
women are still paid far less than their male counterparts—averaging seventy-seven cents to a man’s
dollar—and are still disproportionally segregated in low-wage, “feminized” jobs like clerical and
service work. Even when they make it into elite professional jobs, women are still vastly
underrepresented in positions of power, such as law partners, tenured professors, and corporate officers.
Women’s participation in the workforce is almost equal to men’s, yet women are still overwhelmingly
responsible for cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children when they get home from work. Abortion
has been legal since 1973, but if a woman lives in one of the many counties that have no abortion provider
—which 87 percent of U.S. counties do not—she will likely have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a
clinic and will face many state restrictions for this supposedly legal procedure, one which 30 percent of
women will have in their lifetime.^34 Women are told that they are empowered and that no obstacles
remain in their path, yet each day they face covert and overt sexist attitudes—as well as epidemic rates of
gendered violence—that confirm that this is still very much a man’s world. Girls grow up believing that
one day they can be president of the United States, but we have yet to elect a woman president (or vice
president), women remain a disproportional minority in the U.S. Congress, and those who run for office
often face virulent misogyny that sends the message that politics is still an old boy’s club.
The unfinished business of the earlier feminist revolution led some younger feminists to initially focus
their energies on where the earlier movement had gone wrong—what it failed to accomplish, what it had
left undone—rather than on the formidable obstacles they faced in their own lives. In the first decade of
this new activism and writing, younger feminists stressed generational differences, and even conflict, in
order to articulate how they would improve on feminism. The wave metaphor used to chronicle