c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Sharon Welch is a feminist ethicist who teaches religious and women’s studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia.)

UNDATED _ On a recent cover, Time magazine announced its slam-of-the-year, asking”Is Feminism Dead?”The story compared contemporary, third-wave feminists with their older counterparts, describing the younger set as”flighty.” While the answer to the provocative question posed on the magazine’s cover is a resounding”no,”the article inside reflects an ongoing debate in feminist circles over the outlook of younger women.

Many people who work for social justice and change are driven by the hope life will be better for the next generation. Certainly that is true for the feminist movement. But what happens when it is better? Can we who fought for freedom recognize it when it is attained?

Indeed, it seems younger women experience the world differently than us second-wavers.

For one thing, they do not feel oppressed. A couple of years ago, I heard a young woman on a Midwestern college campus declare that she, like many of her generation, was not a feminist.”Why do I need feminism? My boss last summer started sexually harassing me. I called my family attorney, he called my boss, and the harassment stopped,”she said.

What do we second-wave feminists tell these young women who say they have never been discriminated against? What do we tell these women who believe the world is open to them and they can do whatever they want?

Do we tell them their experience of freedom is a delusion? Do we tell them they won’t be treated equally in the work place, that the glass ceiling will block their aspirations as surely as it has ours? Do we tell them that if they do run for elected office, they will raise fewer campaign funds and are not likely to be elected? Do we tell them they are still immersed in a culture in which images of violent sexuality accompany rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment?

In short, do we second-wave feminists tell them they don’t understand their own experience _ and we do? Do we tell them they can’t do everything they want because this is still a world controlled by men?

But isn’t that what we were told in the 1950s and ’60s? Women can’t be leaders, we were told. Male”experts”understood us better than we understood ourselves. The underlying reasons are different, but the message is the same: Don’t trust your experience; don’t aim too high; and listen to us because we understand the world far better than you do.

It is understandable that we think this way. Our feminism, the feminism of the second wave, was often embattled. We have encountered unjust laws, violence and harassment. Their feminism is like breathing _ they have a natural sense of entitlement, of opportunity, of structures and people in place to challenge the barriers that do occur when equality is violated and denied.

Think about their experience. Yes, there are grave problems facing women. And, now there are institutions addressing those problems: shelters for battered women and better laws regarding domestic violence; a name for sexual harassment and procedures to challenge it; and as for negative media messages, this generation is creating their own images, from the solidly successful Lilith music festival to women filmmakers, ‘zines, and Web pages.

The young women who make it to college are confident, they see themselves as fully equal to men, and by and large, they do not call themselves feminists. When they do, they prefer the insights, hopes and questions of third-wave feminism to the answers, critiques and certainties of second-wave feminism.

We do not have to deny the reality of their empowerment to work with them for more equity. We do not have to deny the reality of their empowerment to provide the tools and support they need when they do encounter discrimination and violence.

One hundred and fifty years ago this month, 300 women and men met in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and declared women equal to men. The result was the first wave of feminism, a wave of activism and social and political critique that led to the rejection of the idea of women as property, and the affirmation of the rights of women to vote, to own property, to exercise the full rights of citizenship.

It would be a fitting commemoration of this anniversary to welcome and celebrate the vitality of the third wave. We might find they have new insights, new questions, and just possibly, a keen understanding of the complexity of their own experience.

DEA END WELCH