History of Feminism

Old-style feminism is dead, and good riddance, because it was unnatural anyway. Banding together with other women to get better childcare, family-friendly policies at work, and better policies against sexual harassment and discrimination is so ’70s. Many women have internalized the messages of “essential feminism,” which exalts women’s caring natures. In her book “In a Different Voice,” Carol Gilligan claims that men and women make moral decisions in fundamentally different ways, with women basing their decisions on caring, and men basing such decisions on justice. Women have superior caring instincts, she argues. In “Women’s Ways of Knowing,” Mary Belenky and her colleagues argue that men value excellence and mastery in intellectual matters, and evaluate arguments in terms of logic and evidence. Women, in contrast, are spiritual, relational, inclusive and credulous. (Never mind that no reliable scientific evidence supports such claims, they have become immensely popular anyway.)