Three Faces of Eve

TO be a feminist these days, apparently, is to feel deeply stigmatized: Few young women call themselves feminists, and the meaning of the word itself appears in dispute and flux. What do feminists want? Why does one of the most powerful and successful social movements in this country’s history appear to have no second act? Three new books, each representing a different face of contemporary feminism, attempt to explain the decline and to jump-start feminism’s renewal as a mass movement.

Susan Estrich is a power feminist, preoccupied with moving more women into the upper echelons of business and politics. A professor at USC Law School who headed Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign, she is an expert on sexual-harassment law, as well as a pundit and talking head. Part of the aging Second Wave of feminists who transformed America in the early ’70s, Estrich is old enough to have been the first female president of the Harvard Law Review and head of the National Organization for Women’s first task force on employment discrimination; yet still young enough, as she sourly notes, to benefit from “legs almost as good as those of the twenty-and thirty-something blondes with whom I’m usually paired” on television.

About the Author

Maggie Gallagher

Maggie Gallagher is the author of four books on marriage and is a longtime contributor to National Review.

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TO be a feminist these days, apparently, is to feel deeply stigmatized: Few young women call themselves feminists, and the meaning of the word itself appears in dispute and flux. What do feminists want? Why does one of the most powerful and successful social movements in this country’s history appear to have no second act? Three new books, each representing a different face of contemporary feminism, attempt to explain the decline and to jump-start feminism’s renewal as a mass movement.

Susan Estrich is a power feminist, preoccupied with moving more women into the upper echelons of business and politics. A professor at USC Law School who headed Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign, she is an expert on sexual-harassment law, as well as a pundit and talking head. Part of the aging Second Wave of feminists who transformed America in the early ’70s, Estrich is old enough to have been the first female president of the Harvard Law Review and head of the National Organization for Women’s first task force on employment discrimination; yet still young enough, as she sourly notes, to benefit from “legs almost as good as those of the twenty-and thirty-something blondes with whom I’m usually paired” on television.