The program hosted by New York University in new york city is about an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] good evening. I am delighted to be here. Moderation is not really my strong suit. [laughter] im very glad to be here tonight as the moderator and the book launch of feminism unfinished a short, surprising history of american Womens Movements. I will introduce the authors and a little while so let me first tell you what the format will be and then i will introduce our three speakers. We will have short tenminute presentations by the three speakers and then we will give the authors of five minutes or so to respond to their comments and then we will open up to the audience for questions and comments. And then of course at the end at 6 30 there will be a reception with wine and chiefs. Let me start by introducing in the order that they will speak the three speakers for this evening. Michelle chen a remarkably prolific journalist writes on economic social and political issues affecting women and lowwage workers in the u. S. And globally. Her work has appeared in the nation newsmagazine huffington post, the american prospect, alternate color line the progressive and other media outlets. She is a contributing editor at the times ann coulter striking coproduces the Community Radio program asiapacific forum on pacifica wca eye. Many of her articles are relevant to our discussion tonight. Notably those on Womens Movements in the middle east and latin america sex and race discrimination in the restaurant industry, fast food strikes and other lowwage worker campaigns for better wages and decent treatment womens reproductive rights and many other subjects. Our second speaker will be Jennifer Baumgardner was a writer activist and filmmaker whose work has chronicled and shaped the direction of u. S. Feminism and the last two decades. In her bestselling book young women and feminism in the future coauthored with Jeannie Richardson 2000 jennifer galvanized a generation of feminist who became a page of the decade after the Womens Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Manifest a bold vision of activism continued in its 2005 grassroots the field guide for feminist activism and in jennifers other books including most recently in addition to being a regular contributor to a wide range of magazines and other news outlets she is the cocreator of the bureau so box and the filmmaker behind the powerful documentary film it was rape and i had an abortion. In 2013 jennifer was named executive director and publisher of the press. Our third speaker is nancy hewitt distinguished professor of gender studies at Rutgers University emeritus. Im so envious of her. [laughter] who is internationally known for her essays and books on womens rights in the 19th and 20th century u. S. Her inclusive histories of Womens Movements take seriously the voices of all women and has inspired many young and old including the authors of feminism unfinished. Among her many recent books the popular edited edition no permanent waves, recasting histories of u. S. Feminism under awardwinning study of womens activism across race and ethnic lines womens activism and Tampa Florida 1880s to 1920. She is a recipient of a prestigious guggenheim fellowship at the event study for stanford in 2000 was named professor of American History at the university of cambridge. Im very delighted to welcome all three of them today and michelle if you could start. Im going to speak at the podium if you dont mind. Thank you. It seems much more official now that im standing. So yes thank you for inviting me to this distinguished panel for which i am totally not worthy but im really glad to be a part of this discussion. I am sure other womens work i have been absorbing through osmosis and my research and scholarly work over the years so i think its an interesting moment to be having in a discussion like this and i guess im going to state and the youngest because i arrived last but whatever it is i decided i would start with something a little bit later. The media was abuzz this week to talk about or chatter rather of the speech at the United Nations in westchester she asked why is the word feminism because saying saying becoming such an uncomfortable one which was interesting because i had the framing of her speech aimed at making the word feminism much more comfortable. And it got me thinking about why we should expect in this day and age for feminism to be comforting for that conversation to be somehow soothing or reassuring or designed to not alienate people and i think thats a tension that feminists and the feminist movement and all its various incarnations have been wrestling with both within itself and among its various factions and strands as well as enter generationally and also with the wider public. And then i thought about while she kind of invokes the whole trope of harry potter and she is an interesting pop cultural position because she is a girl and a child and yet shes also this emerging woman and we are watching her. She defines herself in life and on the screen for us and i thought back to my First Encounter with the language of feminism or with maybe the ideology of feminism. I dont really think they had a name for it back then. I remember when i was in eighth grade i had actually seen an ad in 17 magazine yes im beginning this talk about 17 magazine. Not a good way to start off for feminist lecture, so that was me and i saw an ad soliciting volunteer writers for a startup publication back then. It was actually on a real piece of paper. It was called the new girl times and they were asking for volunteers. It was a short publication in idoni banal that went on but they were asking for contributors to their inaugural issue and i was kind of abutting writer. I was working on my first at the time and starting to get into the world of what i thought was publishing. And i wrote and i got an introduction to the magazine on what it intended to be as a project. I was really struck by the syrupy language that it invoked and it was sort of a very, what i thought was attempt at making feminism palatable and appealing to the twain generation which was in the 1990s just emerging as a Consumer Group them. I wasnt thinking about all of this as i was 14 years old and looking at the introduction but something about it struck me as off. Then i went to my computer and i typed out an angry screed about why i was so offended that this publication had the audacity to call itself the new girl times was trying to do this cutesy thing taking womens issues and dumbing them down and making them sort of fun and carefree and 17 magazine like. So i published it and i did sort of like a mockup. I did sort of a sendup of the publication itself because i kind of took i was into cut and paste them because that was how you did scenes if anyone remembers those. Then you took a logo which was the New York Times logo and i replace the word girl so i had have this screen making fun of this publication and i was angry and then i sent it to the publishers, the publication and awaited her feedback. She wrote back with a single sentence and said i understand you wont be writing for us and i was upset about what you wrote. I think i felt a pang of embarrassment and then i was sort of like why did i do that. Thinking about it now i was a teen blowing off steam and i think i wanted to make a point about why feminism was silly then. Now that i look back at it is sort of strikes me as my First Encounter not just with feminism but the ambivalence that surrounds feminism and the internal conflict that is inherent in it especially in the way that people in my generation have inherited the movement and all of its political trappings and its language. And i think even though i was sort of denouncing this version of feminism that i thought was faux feminism at the same time claiming this for myself even though i didnt really know what i was doing. I wouldnt have called myself a feminist then. I can think of very few instances in my life so far which ive actively stood up and have had to claim that im a feminist for anything. So with that anecdote i just wanted to think about that and maybe it will help situate where we are and maybe get you guys thinking about where you are in terms of that will point that will point did you encounter feminism as an idea and in what ways have you wrestled with having to define it for yourself and to take ownership of that culture and that ideology. There is one thing that the book really shows, that there might be one feminism and every time feminist and feminism as a movement is set back as when there is one group attempting to have the parameter definition of what feminism is. Thats a historical question and the question of race and a question of sexual identity. Its a question of the way we conceive of the world of work and feminism is all of these things and yet it also needs to defined itself outside of that because in embodying all of those things its also asserting the fact that it cannot belong to any single one of those things. So moving away from the new girl times i just wanted to go back to sort of where we are in the contemporary feminist debate. I thought about contradictions that come up now that we see every day in the media. I went to quote cooper or recent essay in salon and she was weighing and on this sort of perennial internal debate about whether feminism is debt and i spend lots of time in the book and of course we all know feminism is not debt otherwise we wouldnt be talking about it. We would need this ritual cleansing every few months or years or so whether its better not. Britney cooper weighs in and she talks about race in feminism in a way that i thought was really trenchant. And she talked about the difference in the way black women and white women will conceptualize feminism in their mind and how they relate to it in their everyday lives. She says our feminism looks like an end to Police Repression and minority communities. Access to Public Schools that did neo. X. Tell our children for minor infractions and an end to the Prison Industrial Complex which locks up far too many of our men and women fracturing families and creating further economic burdens when their loved ones are released. We need comprehensive health care and access to abortion clinics but we also need a Robust Mental Health care system. Thats system. That can address long centuries of racist sexual emotional trauma. We need equal pay but we also need good jobs rather than being relegated to an endless cycle of lowwage work. Wide womens feminism centers around equality. Black womens feminism demands justice and there is a difference. One feminism focuses on the policies that will help them integrate into the existing american system. The other recognizes the fundamental flaws in the system and seeks its total transformation. I will leave it to you to figure out which side of that spectrum you find yourself hikind identifying with more and that is of course completely your choice in the question of where you are in life but i just wanted you to think about it as a spectrum. She is not forcing anyone to choose. Shes asking for an inclusive dialogue and she feels the more boys the other side is given that it often comes at the expense of the voices have long been dissed in franchise. Yes because they are women but also for various other reasons. We always dont always think of that and to be conscious of that is part of what it means to be feminist and to claim out for yourself. In the book professor six cobble writes the increased number of women at the top does not necessarily produce gains for wine at the bottom. There is no trickledown effect. If you think about what my podcasting colleague senator jaffe has said about the trickledown feminism which is that we believe in this new liberal laissezfaire mythology that there is a logic of social justice that naturally flows out of capitalism or that the free market will come up with most just solution. Thats not really anyones fault in particular. I think it comes from centuries that this is the way must be done and guerrilla change to occur there is this march of progress that every Single Institution has to go through whether its the economy or domestic life for law or systems of bias and subjugation. And thoughts to leave you with are these questions in complex that kept occurring as i was reading the book and all three of the sections that you wrote going through time and of course we should wonder why we keep coming back to these questions because they seem unresolvable after more than a century of feminism. One is protection for women versus absolute inequality. We saw this in the commission on the status of women and liebers social feminism and this constant tension between identity of treatment socalled not the same as actual equality and of course sexual equality equality not be the same as equity. This goes back to the question of what is justice. In the second question i wanted to leave you you with is how we prioritize rights. If we accept the fact that not everyone in the world is starting from the same place and that is why we need social movements of people can move from one place to another how do we triaged the struggles that we approach . Thats not to say we need to choose our battles all the time but how can we have them the closest in harmony with each other without forgetting about one of the expense of the other. So we have this between the suffragettes and abolitionists and now we have intergenerational complex of third wave in the next wave of feminism or whatever post them in this world we live in and of course it reflects on the global questions of not everything is proceeding on a timeline of economic progress and of course the progress of one country comes at the expense of another in many cases. Again is feminism whatever we do find it to be as we have often been told at least my generation has or is there a certain ideology of feminism and moral ethical ethical line that when you keep in mind as we build this movement did make a more diverse. So thats it. [applause] i just started needing reading glasses so when i look out here i will have to take them off and when i looked and in here ill have to put them on. I am Jennifer Baumgartner and first of all i want to thank you for making this book. Its meaningful and moving to me to have something that is scholarly that tells the story of people i know and that i i was apart of and writes a book that i wish i had had when i was learning about feminism. I feel like a cobbled together together assorted things because i was so hungry for the history and to see its synthesizer new ways for me to think is really invigorating. I feel like i have a really, i do think about feminism in general i shall a lot. It speaks to me and i think its because my mom was a feminist so really does feel generational to me. There was ms. On the coffee table and font saying you shouldnt be a cheerleader. There was this whole relationship when i was learning about feminism that was about a mom literally. I also think its a visibility issue. The most visible moments in the destabilized moments around 20th century feminism when people think about the feminist movement they think about the 60s and 70s are often people do. That was the greatest hits time of feminism and its often words taught even. All the important stuff was done correctly 50 years ago and what are you doing. Thats how experienced it and im sure i was projecting that it is self negating way but i remember feeling that way. Now i currently in addition to being a feminist iran these camps called a feminist camp. Everyday we go deep into a feminist issue. It could be frozen prison limited incarcerated or could be sex work. We have lots of meetings and on our first meeting we asked people how they came to feminism and maybe what their definition is. Its always fascinating but oftentimes people will times people will say is like a 25 year living with beyonce and everything going on right now my life and i will say i feel like was born at the wrong time. I wish i had been born when abortion was illegal and you couldnt get a job if you are women. You had to take valium on the time youre so depressed. I wish id been born then when it was clear what to do. I dont relate to that currently but i relate to that. When i first went to new york i worked at ms. Magazine and i remember feeling like i really missed out on the good stuff when people were really rebellious and revolutionary and they were doing important things. Every day their day was made up of meaningful work. Im never going to get that opportunity because of when i was born. I was just kind of grousing about that and how i wanted to be an actress. Because i was raised in Fargo North Dakota i will never get that opportunity. In a lot of ways handing off the volition to have a life that i wanted to have wanted to have to have the feminist life that i wanted to have for for someone else for someone most intimate. Its taken a long time and i think its something every generation struggles with to just be able to frame and understand the era that im a part of the community that im a part of it do something with them that its meaningful and to acknowledge when i have done that. It was hard for me to own my ideas. One of the reasons that manifest a is so steeped in relationship sometimes grumping about it and sometimes canonizing or cheerleading the second wave the reason i was so connected was i wasnt sure what it would mean to own what i was doing. Whats i love to have a definition of feminism that made sense to me . Was i allowed to have an opinion about abortion if i hadnt known a time when it was illegal or was i hopelessly narrow in my consciousness because i had never known that time quetta took a long time for me to figure out that i had specific points that could be useful by having been entitled to certain things. So i was making a little note before i came up here of all the things i had done professionally and i was realizing how connected they are to the second way. I grew up with ms. On the table as they say that i got to college and discovered feminism and i read all these books. I literally was the housewifes moment of truth. Thats me. You are in college and they dont have kids and dont do housework but i felt deeply the angst and i felt deeply the frustration and unfairness but i think i was kind of putting a square peg in a round hole. It was an experience i felt attaching it to experiences that were not my own. I couldnt have the outrage if i didnt have the same experiences. After that i moved to new york and began working at ms. Magazine and meeting these different womens liberation said i would read about in the book. That was my 17 magazine. Roxanne dunbarortiz, im going to meet her. I got to be part of the stories of feminism that gave me all of this access that i was craving to come into my own as a feminist. I remember i had been working in feminism for years and years and she said do you know what i think we should do . We should say what it is and make sure we said what it is for the random reader and we both sat there and they went what is it . I worked at feminism for years and had never been asked to define it. We took that dictionary definition which was the movement for full full political equality of all people and we wrote that down we decided to look at to that. We kept adding to it and now its 15 or 20 years later and im still adding to that definition for myself. Too many feminism while it do think it has core ideologies that it stands for its incredibly iterative and evolve. My understanding of it evolves every year and gets deeper depending on experience as im having and how much i connected to my life. My current definition of feminism at this point we added to it in the book in the dictionary definition is access to information resources to make meaningful real decisions about your life. Maybe you would choose to shave and maybe choose not to shave but feminism is in the air and you have the ability to make the decision. Since then the way ive been thinking about about feminism that most of what im grateful for with feminist theory and philosophy is i think feminism is in imitation. Its hard to bring all parts of yourself in a realm, all the experiences you had. Society all over and over we do want to hear about that. We wont dont want ear buds or sexuality and we dont want to hear about that rape. We dont want to hear about your sadness when you your sadness when one ear biters shoplifting. So many things happening to girls and women especially are too much away to want ear buds. Think feminism provides resources and space actual space he can bring all the parts of yourself everything thats happened to you you and the shape you into the room with you and to tell the truth about what is happening to you. That has been the really meaningful entry point to feminism for me. I guess thats what i think of as my way of practicing feminism. It doesnt need to be other peoples but all the projects ive done. I had an Abortion Campaign and the kinds of things i do when im speaking on college campuses. I tried to create space for people to tell the truth about whats happened to them. Sometimes all i get back is that i listen and say im sorry that happened to you or i will share something with someone else some other story that someone has entrusted to me. To me that therapeutic attitude is incredibly powerful. The ability to step out from the things we are afraid to talk about and to own those experiences has guided my feminist politics through my adult life. I continue to peel back my own denial and give consciousness about what has happened to me. For instance right now im working on a book project. Ive known for years since i was 15 that my sister was raped when she was 14 and she was called names in there was that transformation happens with the girl is blamed for the thing thing that happens there. Took years and reading feminist books and talking to feminist before we were able to retrieve language and say what happened to my sister was not she is this bad thing happened to her and she was blamed for it. We were able to retrieve parts of our lives that we shared and worry them right now is im learning learning how much that affected me how much i identified myself as not a and found ways to distance myself from andrea at the same time as trying to support her. I think i see that in the ways in which everybody decries shaming and theres so much interest on how little we are able to move the needle. Its because i believe we really really deeply embody ambivalence around womens power, womens rights, womens humanity and its an incredible thing to face. So the more we can actually face the truth of what has happened to us to provide some sort of path to i thank larger social justice. Thank you. [applause] good evening. I hope you have all found seats. It is a pleasure to join this launch of feminism unfinished alongside thinkers writers and activists who ive long admired. Bashar surprising history written by dorothy sue cobble Jennifer Baumgardner and nancy hewitt covers the strategies diverse constituencies and extraordinary challenges that mark u. S. Feminism by tracing multiple movements and campaigns and the myriad organizations and actors over the last century. They offer a robust pass for contemporary activism also i think renewed hope for those of us who is lived through as many backlashes as advancements. I cant begin to capture in 10 minutes all the strength and subtleties of this book so instead im going to use my time to suggest how feminism and finish makes clear the need to shift our metaphors replacing the standard conception of oceanic waves with a more nuanced understanding offered by radio waves. Endicott gerson and i have been thinking along these lines since the late 1990s ended a 2005 article based on her research on subcultures and new technologies she captured what we both sought quote airwave that measures different multiple and simultaneous frequencies. Radio waves also embody explicit hierarchies of power through wattage, volume and practical reach and taken together these characteristics allow us far greater flexibility in engaging feminist ways than does the oceanic model. Oceanic framing is especially problematic for those of us who work in the 19th century. Since the self proclaimed a second which i was a part lumped all of our predecessors the entire sweep of american rights of activism from the 1840s into one long american womens rights and feminist ways. Despite the incredible range of actors and campaigns and that period Sojourner Truth and abolitionist feminism al gore and phelps and the working Womens League Margaret Sanger and Birth Control emma goldman and free love, we could go on and on, the first wave is almost universally claimed by a single narrative that carries the story from the Seneca Falls Convention of 1942 the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 granting womens suffrage. Since its impossible to add more oceanic waves before 1960 since the second wave is a the concept is so entrenched in the historical record and archives and Library Catalogs in popular thinking the decades excluded and then we had to come up with a new metaphor. Moreover the decades excluded from the standard chronology most notably in 19221960 have become feminist free zones before the work of dorothy sue cobble who has made sure we know that just isnt so. In addition as astrid henry points out the term third wave seemed to stress that this new wave was an improvement over what came earlier. Too often leading leaving younger activist to describe the previous generation and monolithic, lithwick and caricatured ways in order to present themselves as the improved version of feminism. My generation certainly pushed back against this tendency goes sometimes simply by turning it on its head and character during the third wave so that doesnt get us too far. Importantly we in the second wave invented this modus operandi critiquing our 19th century 19th century mothers is predominately white and middleclass, overly serious and respectable and focused on narrow political goals. But my generation also raised important critiques of our own movement. This bridge call all the women are white all the blacks are men and other critiques of white class and class privilege were written by second Wave Feminist plot and womens studies and history courses redeveloped and then well do it very effectively by the Third Generation against the movement that we thought we were part of. This repeated pattern of recognition and criticism of her earlier feminist efforts i think is promoted by oceanic metaphor in which each wave overwhelms and exceeds the one before it. Thus obscuring the common struggles that feminists have faced since the 19th century to the present. These include the ways sex discrimination is always intertwined with the race and class, the complicated relations between u. S. Feminism and global campaigns for social justice, the conflict over the place of sexuality, gender and men and womens rights campaigns, the role of new technologies and building a movement and so on. The beauty of feminism unfinished is that it captures both the contested priorities distinct Distinct Strategies in the debates that occurred in specific times and the common threats and challenges that feminists faced across a century of activism. Each chapter addresses the struggles that they confronted in integrating race, class and ethnic issues and to campaigns focused around women and gender and vice versa. As callable shows the social Justice Thomas of the 1920s to the 1950s infused labor campaigns with feminist and antiracist demands. But they couldnt convince the National Womens party of that same era which continue to consider sex the primary form of discrimination and wrote that into the equal rights amendment. Similarly gordon argues social justice issues drove back to this into Antiwar Movements shaping their feminist agendas and priorities. But she also notes that the largely separate wide africanamerican, American Indian asianamerican chicago and workingclass feminist groups or organizations that develop create distinct agendas and strategies even as they forge crucial alliances. Astrid henry makes clear the central role of women of color in the emergence of a third wave wave. The heightened sensitivity to rape race and ethnicity to her generation among feminists and the demographic and technological changes that increase the possibility of truly multiracial and global organizing. But she also notes that a lack of Historical Perspective and the continued investment of class and White Privilege which has certainly not gone away lead to continued complex even within that movement and gives examples like the wok or the advocacy of leaning in that echo problems of the past. I do want to challenge one argument in the book and not surprisingly its from the chapter on womens liberation which is where i encounter feminism. Linda gordon argues that the initial separation of feminist generations between friends is the National Organization for women and womens liberation did not last long quote because the movement became vastly larger but coming from a small city in new new york were feminist supposedly overcame their differences more easily and embracing womens liberation in 1969 i experience those generational and ideological conditions as significant for very long time. And in some ways i found them exacerbated by feminist feminisms rapid growth. At the same time i agree with gordons claim that the possibilities created by the distinct feminist Campaign Launched by africanamerican American Indian latina chacon and asianamerican feminist. She suggests the use of multiple streams strengthen rather than weaken the movement and i would just like to argue that the same could be said for the ideological differences among predominately white feminist groups. Indeed as a scholar i recognize the efficacy of multiple movements attacking the same issue from diverse perspectives and strategies. Nonetheless as an activist i still side with collective multiracial social justice efforts and i still have never joined the National Organization for women which doesnt mean they dont do some of this work. Its just that my move has been convicted based cross class organizing his eyes made me feel like i just cant go there. Or maybe i just hold resentments much longer than linda does. It may just be personality. But this is a small caveat caveat in a book that analyzes issues of beer to my heart. This is my only substandard disagreement and of course its generative as disagreements are. By offering complex and once complex and nuanced narratives of activism over the last century feminist feminism unfinished highlights them as wavelength and a rich array of transmitters organizing protesters posters newspapers magazines themes art exhibits web sites and blogs that extend the reach of each version of the movement. Feminists radio waves almost a think about the movements in terms of different frequencies that occur simultaneously movements that grow louder or fade out National Audiences corp. Community radio audiences movements marked by a static interruptions and frequent changes of channels and movements that are temporarily found out by another agency but suddenly coming in loud and clear. Moreover radio waves her from mind is feminist ideas are in the air even when people are not actively listening. Best of all radio waves did not supersede each other. Rather signals overlap coexist and interfere with one another. They can move on to new frequencies. You can move on to new frequencies or you can return to the oldies station where you feel really comfortable. Rather than the a first second and third wave the corporate broadcasting system, the w. Bia or that aljazeera all of which of course are now available on line as well as on air. Like feminism unfinished thinking in terms of feminist frequencies encourages us to explore signals and echoes across time, space and Movement Without assuming we must rank them as being superior in terms of inclusivity progressiveness for transformation and i think when we grace all those differences are wave will become vastly larger and more powerful. Thank you. [applause] thank you michelle, Jennifer Nancy and forgive me for having to show that horrible one minute paper to you just when you were giving to the most interesting point. We now will have brief comments from the three authors of the book. Dorothy sue cobble teaches at Rutgers University where she is distinguished professor of history in labor studies. Linda gordon is University Professor of history and humanities at New York University and astrid henry is the louise are now in chair of studies at cornell college. We will start with dorothy sue. Thank you. Thanks so much for those remarks remarks. Thank you for putting so much care and thought into it and i really appreciate what you have said about the book. We have also raised a lot of very interesting issues that i want us to have time to address common issues of identity, priorities language having described the history of feminism. I want to take a few minutes just to talk about the women that i write about in my chapter chapter. I think the agenda that they pursued for the 50 years that i write about its actually a 50 year period period that for a long time people called it was the builder of years. Can you imagine this all whole half century of feminism when there wasnt supposed to be anything happening . It turned out there was a lot happening from the 1920s right into the 60s. So i want to say a few words about these women because they think what they fought for which wasnt inclusive agenda of womens lives in social justice is very much back on the table today. And i think the way they went about it their strategies also we should look back to and resuscitate. Im just going to take a minute to do that. Before i do that i just want to thank a few other people. I want to thank nyu and norton for hosting us tonight and also think so many of you for being here. Im just really happy to see my friends and colleagues out there and my family. I also want to extend a special welcome to rutgers prep middle schoolers who came here and their teachers to democracy prep. Rutgers prep is where my daughter went to school. Democracy prep is where she now teaches so if you could just raise your hand. We are very glad to have you here with us. [applause] and i know all of you have prepared questions for us so i hope we have time for that. My last thank you as to my coauthors. We have been working together for a couple of years. I had no idea what is going to be like to write a book with two other people. I just want to thank you for your sanity, your wisdom, your generosity and all your hard work. Okay so i did want to save a minute to talk about some women and folks not in this room. I think we are at a very particular moment right now, very promising moment. The new republic calls this an unprecedented moment for feminism a gamechanger, a Tipping Point very i think the question really is how we can take that enthusiasm that i see iraq thing all around. The surveys now show that women under 30 close to a majority of them identify as feminists. Celebrities are coming out of the closet every day to claim themselves as feminists. So the question really is how we can take that enthusiasm and move it to the next stage. And i think that the women that i write about have something to teach us about this. They argued that it would take the movement and i think that is part of what inspired this book. Its not just going to be about individual women making it into the corporate boardroom or individual women moving into politics. Its going to take a movement. They also argued that it would take a diverse and Inclusive Movement and so many of our panels speakers have made that clear. Most importantly or equally important is they argued that the Womens Movement showed and will be about more than sex equality. Its about sex equality but it also has to be about other issues. They look to the Labor Movement at that moment in time and to the Civil Rights Movement because those were the two huge Progressive Movements that were making massive changes. They engaged with those movements. They also push for womens rights. One reviewer has said that this was a group of women that were not feminist. Well let me just go on record to say they were. They introduced the equal pay act in 1945. They reintroduce it every year and tele passed in 1963. They pushed president kennedy to establish the president s commission on women. That commission called for universal childcare for legislation that would make it more possible for workers to organize and challenge corporate power. A whole host of things that i think are very much back on the agenda. It was a revolution that was unfinished and what is exciting for me is to see some of those things being back with us and being pursued. I look around and we know there is progress on so many of these issues. The living wage ordinances paid parental leave campaigns, new attention to childcare and elder care, fast food strikes fair scheduling. So these issues are back with us. I think we also need to look to that movement to think about how we create movements that are inclusive. If we are going to make a better world for women i dont think we can do that without making a better world for all. Thank you very much. [applause] thanks so much to all of you and particularly Jessica Coffey who did a lot of work in a this setting this up into barbara hugh i wrote to in the last minute that particularly michelle, jennifer and nancy. In some ways we saw them as representing a range of what feminism is doing these days. When the left first became a political term and a proud political term that was in the french revolution as im sure you all know feminists were very importantly involved. That is because in every Progressive Movement since then and it still is feminism has of course developed in a variety of ways. There are even republican feminists and i have read that their tea party feminists and i have recently learned from my own research that they were feminists in and these come under the rubric of feminism because they believed in equality with men. Just like dorothy just said i think the three of us came together in the sense that we wanted to talk about a stream of feminism that had much larger ambitions. Thats pretty ambitious because even equality with men is pretty far from where we are today. We wanted to think through the career of multiple feminism over a fairly long period of time and to do that in a short book and one that is not particularly a scholarly book. We are trying to write from a very general audience. It will be up to you whether we have succeeded in doing something useful with that but i want to just try to enunciate some very general terms and what i think the three of us came together about and that is that we find feminists everywhere. Sometimes they work only working groups with only one but often they work in groups with men. They were in occupied and they are prominent in the movement against Climate Change. They are in every Antiwar Movement throughout the world but they are also in every anticolonial and antiimperialist movement. Feminist actually led every struggle for Child Welfare public health. They met everywhere in the struggle for universal free education. They are working today to reform every religion on the planet. They have been the backbone of every Antiracist Movement in the United States starting with the Abolition Movement in the 19th century and today women together with immigrants i think are the best hope there is for a strengthening of the Labor Movement. In mentioning these movements that are not usually defined as feminists not because i want to diminish the importance of the issues like rape or abortion or sexual of freedom but again i want to suggest that i think what this all amounts to is a very radical statement and that is that male dominance plays a part in all of the worlds violence injustice and suppression of human potential. Feminism has never been perfect. They never all agree with each other. Probably agreement isnt something that they should even strive for because i think there is plenty of evidence that a variety of different movements can have as much if not more of an impact and pull things together. The last thing i would say just hearkening back to something that michelle opened with is that its really a time to push to reclaim and make comfortable award feminism not because of what it is as a word but because of what it is a concept and how much work there is to be done in the world. Anyway, thanks a lot. [applause] thank you. I again want to thank especially our speakers Michelle Jennifer and nancy for speaking and for everyone who helped to bring this event together and i also of course want to thank linda and dorothy sue. We had many wonderful times around lindas dining room table table. A lot of it involves good food and wine at the end of the day of her call and it was just a really wonderful intense process of putting this book together. Im really grateful to be here and celebrating the launch of this book. Like jennifer i grew up with a feminist mother and a feminists father actually and a feminists father who was also a feminist professor so i had kind of an interesting role model they are. I grew up identifying as a feminist from a really early age. My mom said she could remember me using that term at six years old. I am part of that generation who took it for granted and it was only actually later in college and in the early 90s when i started reading people like kate thinking a lot with all the stuff im rape on campus again. Thinking of generational shifts. I started realizing how intense my relationship was to feminism and identification much like jennifers to this earlier wave of feminism, the second wave that i very much fell in love with come identified with and have that sense of why couldnt i have lived in that time . It would have been so exciting. That is where he started to get interested in this work and probably one of the things that is the most difficult about writing my section and the Chicago Tribune that came out called it a daunting task was to try to write about the present is very difficult. Its difficult to know where you are going to start it, where you were going to and in how you are going to frame it and that was really one of the challenges that i had and ever since we wrapped the book and it was finished more or less so many things keep happening. Just this last week i feel like oh my god i shouldve talked about that in the book. So its hard to write about the present. I will say that. I kind of wanted to say that. We really did want to try to tell a different story and to disrupt that idea of the waves and disrupt the idea of the white middle class heterosexual feminist history and which is very much focused on entry into the corporate world, equality with white men around pay equity and things like that and i hope we have done that. The idea of radio waves that nancy talked about i really like like that metaphor is a replacement. Allows us to think about the ways in which feminism is out there on different channels all the time. People come into it at different moments. I think about my experience growing up in a feminist household and yet i work with students who are half my age are much younger than that were thinking about feminism for the first time who didnt grow up in families like that. Its this weird thing where feminism is old for many of us but its always nailed for many many people. I think the waves metaphor prevents us from seeing that. For many people they are discovering feminism for the first time in a way that people describe those moments in the 60s. The radio waves helps us to think about that though we are tuning into different radio channels at different times. One of the goals of our book and certainly one of the goals of the chapter that i wrote was to really show how feminism today is very decentralized. It has many diverse forms. The internet has radically changed the medium by which feminism is being explored and its not only diverse in its forms but its diverse and its agenda as michelle was saying. On one hand we have a figure like Sheryl Sandberg who is really arguing against similar message of feminism that her book was trying to critique. At the same time we have a much more radical agenda that michelle alluded to in her discussion of the Brittany Cooper article in salon addressing a lot of radical issues that are not just about entering into the corporate workforce. So we can take as many questions as possible. A and we have a microphone. I would really love to hear your heros of feminism are. I think it means to advocate for womens rights. There are a lot of women that are denied jobs and those are only given to men. Would think that is to advocate for a woman to the have the same equal rights as a man in. I was that a meeting for this search for the new president and people kept referring to the future of named president as he and they were determined it would be a man so i appreciate your remarks. I want to be fair at the beginning of a lecture it is poignant because all of the exercise has seen on the media and the very important point that she made is the role of men inside the feminist movement. And one thing that she said it was because of men with the women teaming up with men backs there were feminist if you were brought up by a feminist man. But i was having these conversations and then to see things of this speech speech, and the passion of my sister. For the Inclusive Movement in then to know the role of man. Thank you. Talking about relationships have a question i have like gay marriage that is seen as part of a Progressive Movement in and it is regressive patriarchal with a mature relationship or the options to move forward or not. This is very shorthand but first of all, thank you. I cannot wait to read the book. With that promise of the diversity and decentralization of multiple types of feminism how you work relates to people like the frazier so have i. Du position in this book . As a group have a black woman feminism is different from white women feminism . This would be a good moment. I will comment on a couple of the questions. From the 20s through the sixties to work with other women there were in very involved in the mixed sense movements. So to be allies is to increase minimumwage your labor rights. The minimum wage affects men but also it is a womens issue that the majority or like 57 percent of minimumwage workers are women. But there are tensions like sexual harassment. And one of the things ive learned is how dependent the progress of women is of lurcher Progressive Social movements. So the Civil Rights Movement was incredibly important to address the needs of africanamerican women. Women are divers so it is not a surprise so the notion of liberation of freedom and equality would be diverse routes be better to do other issues so even when we Pass Coverage that was not giving all women the right to vote and that was not until the 1965. It is significant but it is certainly true that in some ways feminism can enhance the set of privileges that are most easily and quickly enjoyed by those who have other privileges in society like those who are wealthy or white. But that does not mean we dont have to support those issues. I refuse to get married for the same reasons of k barrett is a problematic institution but it is clear to my friends as well that gay people have every right to to with joy every rights of the of benefits of marriage also talking about womens struggle this is not a cause that excites me been on the other hand, they do have rights to absolut equal treatment so we can separate our priorities without necessarily dimming movements that may be less radical than we might want them to be. On the issue of marriage his is a long standing difference to teach sure that perkins where she basically makes a strong argument against marriage to envision something we have not yet achieved in the forms of living and the students were struck how is it compare with the more mainstream agenda today . So the tension is there and ongoing but i also love that the tensions are there and whatever feminism or a gayrights there are today. I want to respond to black and white feminists of. There are sections in the book will try to summarize those were the authors who are sitting here. But there is a danger to impose blackandwhite feminism as to entities and i love pretty coopers work but i worry there is us a tendency to redefine the categories why feminism is always less radical or justice oriented and always about the agenda that is concerned the poorest of the core among the white and black feminists there are many variations and one of the places we need to look more closely is multiracial feminist movement into racist feminist feathered world the minister for what has spent obstacles are challenges with those racial differences are always crosscut with the differences in class or other conversation is suggested by gary terms multiple racial breakdowns and that is true in the 1840s and 1890s and in the 30s. Ladies think it is problematic to think of anything as by gary. In to as they put on my graduate student at but there is always a consciousness with feminism that there are other parallels struggles. There were tense moments and conflict when one is over another but now i think just does the minister should be included of men it is important to understand any conflict is more to make it more inclusive wherewith they are very charging definition. So that means Everyone Needs to rethink what is. It has destabilized the gender based script the genitalia you are bored with tell you your future but saw everything we say like a week ago and i have two questions and we loved each of them i am inspired and there is a lot of resistance to our life. We have time for one more question. What can i do to help you as a feminist . Every day offers opportunities to be a feminist hero by fear and to look around your actual life what is going on and where you noticing that concern you . Talking to you dont to yonder people that just codes are applied. Every day we have to get dressed, what does it mean and what does it mean to have our appearance to let us express ourselves . I would like to know people who disagree about your idea is and why would you respond that way . I will take the three questions. Actually back then they would be unfair to women. So why do men feel that they should . I would ask all the authors. And will start the last question about why men did that it is complicated. [laughter] but how do i think i have contributed . I think they contribute most has a teacher actually of teaching in working with students and what is great is my students always ask new questions, and new ideas and i stay engaged with them i am not a professional activists. So i am not out there fighting for a particular cause is all the way do political work but reading things and talking about them is how id do it. That is one of the many ways you can have feminism. Going back to what i said with a lot of different context against Climate Change right now is seems to me one of the biggest issues is our planet possibly being destroyed and i do think that there was a notion that we as humans should take and grab would never agree could for the sake of profit but also to build things or make things that are bigger and better. That we need to use to back and think of our emphasis to his Work Production and a you could be a feminist while thinking about it. [applause] i would say those you disagree have changed enormously over the course of my life. [laughter] when i was in the Womens Liberation Movement i was not a diplomatic person and it felt i had a lot of rage against the war in vietnam or male supremacy and rage about injustices on race. And they rushed into my mind and politics through 1969 and was a freshman in college. It people who disagreed were just wrong. [laughter] in this endeavor not worth talking to but then you realize some of the things you thought were wrong or maybe not the best reggie and you do the people coming at issues from different perspectives. It begins as a prospective it into my own it is is a long learning curve and with the way to think about that but youre here to teach them. That being a professor has helped me lot with that part of my life. I think when i was young i did not listen to other people well. Into understand where people are coming from and their reasons that were extremely important to. If i could Say Something quickly. But several of us what a historian realizes so that people see things as normal. So how do people decide to take history into their own hands . Sojourn have more power than women. So part of the mystery of the past is how did they think these were okay . And then to show that it was not okay. It is so great to hear