Equality is a given for daughters of feminism `WE hold these truths to be self-evident,'' wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848. ``All men and women are created equal.'' This month marks the 150th anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., where American women first met to demand the right to vote, to be educated, to enter trades and professions, to be equal under the law. Time Magazine marked the anniversary with a cover story asking ``Is Feminism Dead?'' The cover art answered the question, picturing real leaders Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem with fictional Ally McBeal, TV's self-centered, short-skirted girl-woman of the year. The first generation of feminists, who united to fight for equal rights, are as defunct as bloomers, Time tells us. Now ``chic young feminist thinkers'' have concluded ``it's all about me,'' especially me and my sex life. Analyzing the women's movement as popular culture, Time concludes post-feminism is symbolized by TV character Ally McBeal, a flaky attorney preoccupied with her insecurities and her desires. I see no evidence that ``Ally McBeal'' represents the zeitgeist any more than ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' or ``Xena: Warrior Princess'' or, for that matter, ``Murphy Brown.'' McBeal is the comic alter ego to all those sleek, tough women lawyers who've strode through TV police stations, courtrooms and law offices for the last 15 years. She is meant to be laughable. A generation ago, 3 percent of lawyers were female. Now nearly half of law school graduates are female. That's not fiction. For role models, girls can see real women in positions of power as U.S. senators, as Supreme Court justices, as attorney general, as secretary of state, as CEO of Mattel. They can cheer for women basketball pros, and sing along at the all-female Lilith Fair. Time complains about an upcoming TV series about a young woman who ``rebels against Daddy's wishes that she attend his alma mater and become a doctor,'' instead going to Manhattan to make her own way without the benefit of a college education and career skills. n other words: TV's stereotype of an old-fogey father is a man who wants his daughter to attend an elite college and enter an elite profession. You've come a long way, babe. We baby boomers, the generation liberated by Friedan and Steinem, are busy coping with the expanded opportunities, and responsibilities, won by feminism. Our daughters aren't fighting for equality because they take it for granted. The confidence of adolescent girls astounds me. They think they can do anything. They never ask themselves the question that we asked frequently at that age: Can I do this? Can I become this? Is this choice OK for a girl? Where girls' aspirations are low, it's much more related to class than gender; they come from families and neighborhoods where little is expected of boys or girls. My house is frequently filled with teenage girls, friends of my daughter. I assure you that no one has ``silenced'' them. (I've tried, but with little success.) Girls are supposed to lose their self-esteem, their exuberance, their ambition, their ``voice,'' their ability to solve math problems when they hit puberty. But it ain't necessarily so. In ``The Myth that Schools Shortchange Girls,'' Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska, takes on the idea that American girls lose self-esteem in their teens. She notes that a 1997 study by the Commonwealth Fund found boys slightly more likely than girls to ``strongly agree'' with statements such as ``I am able to do things as well as most other people'' and ``I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal basis with others.'' But when ``somewhat agree'' was added to ``strongly agree'' the differences vanish: 87 percent of girls and 87 percent of boys feel competent; 90 percent of girls and 89 percent of boys feel worthwhile and equal. Not only do the vast majority of adolescent girls feel pretty darned good about themselves, most are doing pretty darned well. Overall, girls earn higher grades than boys, and are more likely to graduate from high school and from college. Girls surpass boys in communications skills, Kleinfeld notes, and have nearly closed the gap in math and science achievement, perhaps because girls now take as many math and science classes in high school as their male classmates. Forty percent of students who take Advanced Placement tests in math and science are girls, and 40 percent of Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalists are female, a huge increase. ``The Girls Report: What We Know and Need to Know About Growing Up Female,'' by the National Council for Research on Women, agrees that girls are doing well in school, and adds other good news. The teenage birth rate is declining steadily. Adolescent girls' sense of self-worth is affected not only by gender but by race, class, culture and sexual identity, writes the report's author, Lynn Phillips, professor at New School for Social Research. Citing a 1997 study that found no ``loss of voice'' among adolescent girls, no suppression of the ``true self,'' Phillips concludes girls' strengths have been underrated. Is feminism dead? Depends if you're talking about Victim Feminism or Power Feminism or Do Me Feminism or Difference Feminism or the feminism of the young, for whom equality is self-evident: Duh Feminism lives. |