When Everything Changed, A Review of the Book and the Movement

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Friday, March 05 2010

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Opinion:

Women’s liberation. Feminism. Bra-burning.

Few of today’s young women, or older women for that matter, would align themselves with the first two, and the third is a myth. But all of these terms churn up collective images from one of the greatest social movements in history.

Gail Collins’s riveting, epic new book, When Everything Changed, tells the story. Its subtitle, The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, should have been called an incredible journey. The transformation that occurred in a mere fifty years has irrevocably changed the day-to-day existence of women and men across the planet from a way of life that had been in place since history has been recorded.

For today’s young women, the right to pursue a career, have their own money, buy a house, or control their own bodies is a given. These liberties are so basic and ingrained in the 21st century world that women’s liberation seems as dated a term as suffrage. And for many, feminism is a word reserved for angry, man-hating radicals. Few would put themselves in either category.

Yes, we’ve come a long way baby – but maybe not as far as you think.

That other great social movement of the 20th century, Civil Rights, now has museums erected to commemorate its importance in many of the Southern cities that once practiced institutionalized racism at its worst. Yet women’s liberation is rarely mentioned and probably not understood by anyone under 40.

As we all know, despite the election that took place just over a year ago, racism is not dead. But its practice is abhorrent to any thinking person in 2010. And, the movement that paved the way for Barack Obama to lead our nation is, as it should be, celebrated throughout our society.

Why then do we not commemorate Betty Freidan, who was as important to the women’s movement as Dr. King was to Civil Rights? Why are extraordinary social-change agents such as Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordon, and Shirley Chisholm (the first and only black female candidate for president) all but forgotten?

Could it be that many of the women who changed things were aggressive and sometimes even hostile, traits that are still unacceptable in women? History shows us that sweeping social change and timidity don’t mix. It takes in-your-face confrontation, and our society still uses the “b” word for women who employ such tactics. Maybe we want to forget about the forceful women we needed to win the battle because, despite everything, we still don’t like that style of female.

Yet, it was not so long ago that little girls played pretend mommy, nurse, or teacher because those were the only things they could observe a woman doing. A woman doctor, lawyer, or politician was an aberration, as strange and foreign to the pre-feminist era as a black head of state.

Until the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, previous attempts for sexual equality, from feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in the 18th century to the trousers-wearing George Sand in the 19th, were mostly confined to a small intellectual elite. The suffragists of the early 20th century fought valiantly to earn women the right to vote, but the victory was singular and didn’t inspire more.