What do feminists think about in 2005?

My very new friend, Philip Greenspun, has a post on his blog today, saying:

Women have seemingly achieved most of the goals of the folks in the 1960s who called themselves "feminists."  Women can work 24/7.  Women can vote (for the white male of their choice, at least in the last few presidential elections).  Women can get abortions without having to travel beyond their home state.  Women constitute close to 50 percent of the young folks training for and holding jobs that are actually worth having (e.g., medical doctor).

And I could only think of about 7,324 things that I'm still thinking I'd like to change, and am actively working to change, as a woman in our society, starting with equal pay for equal work, the fact that only 7 of the Fortune 500 companies have women CEO's, and myriad other enormous issues.

And I would like to see a woman be President of the United States.

And I'm delighted to say that the women's right to vote passed in this country long before the 1960's. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified August 18, 1920.

Any other women and men out there who think of themselves as feminists want to say what they're thinking about in 2005? 

Comments

[Dave Jilk]

No one who can do anything about it will take pay bias seriously until advocates start working harder to remove the socialistic bias from the statistics.

The "73 cents" statistic is such a conglomeration of apples and oranges that it is virtually meaningless. Women who pick professions that don't pay as well, will not get paid as well. That's a pretty simple identity.

Also, it takes time for women to work their way up. They've made a lot of progress. But it's still filling in at the top. This is also not pay equity, it's glass ceiling and promotion bias. A different issue.

Women who choose to leave the workplace to have children will not have as much experience nor as much flexibility to work long hours. This is not a pay bias issue. Again, it's a different social issue.

And trying to "control" for this using years of experience, education, etc. is not valid either.

I think the case for eliminating pay bias could be made much more strongly to HR and CEO types if the statistic were actually valid -- because then they couldn't vaguely write it off to all the other factors. I'm confident that after pulling everything else out, there would still be bias.

[Abby Vigneron]

Spoken like a true Wellesley grad! Sometimes I still feel guilty that I didn't go there.

This has been a peeve of mine since highschool. I went to a girls day school in Boston for grades 5-8, but then I went to a boarding school that had only gone co-ed in the mid 80's, starting in the 9th grade. One of my classmates said that she believed in women's equality, but she didn't want to call herself a feminist, because that meant that you didn't shave your legs. Please!

I don't want to see HRC as president, because I don't trust her on civil liberties issues, and I'm still angry about her vote for the Iraq war. And she really bungled healthcare reform. But I think that it would be great to have a woman president--just not her.

[Ben Casnocha]

Definitely the glass ceiling in corporate America. If you get the Economist or see it at a newsstand, their cover story this week is about how to get mommy to the CEO chair. The article says it's not about women opting-out of the exec track, it's about modifying the "rules" of the workplace to better suit their needs. It doesn't make any sense at all for companies that sell to women to have a management team that's 99% male.

Oh - and I'll support Hilary for prez just to be part of history. My only concern is what happens when Bill can wonder around the West Wing by himself, with nothing to do when Hilary is off on diplomatic trips abroad....