Hugo Schwyzer

Women Thrive Worldwide has launched a new campaign to publicize their fight against global poverty — poverty that so often wears a woman’s face. Hundreds of millions of women survive on about one dollar a day or less; the president of Women Thrive, Ritu Sharma Fox, traveled recently to Nicaragua (one of the poorest countries in our hemisphere) to document what one dollar a day really means. You can read her diary or look at a photo album.

Women Thrive serves as an umbrella organization, uniting more than 50 non-profits (from Lutheran World Relief to the Muslim Women’s Coalition) to advocate for policies that can better the lives of women — and their families — in the poorest countries of the world.

Women Thrive Worldwide has issued a “dollar a day” challenge, asking those who can to consider contributing one dollar a day for a year to the cause of combatting poverty by empowering women. You can donate here.

I’m pleased to blog in support of Women Thrive, and as I do so, I have this Los Angeles Times op-ed by Elizabeth Wurtzel on my brain: Bitter Ashes of Burned Brassieres. I knew I was going to hype Women Thrive this morning, and I had that in the back of my mind as I read this in the paper:

Am I the only one who feels that last week’s news events prove that the women’s movement has failed?

Is this the world that feminism hath wrought?

Look, I’m upset about the Ferraro thing for a variety of reasons, and I’ve said my piece about Eliot and Silda Spitzer. But to somehow connect the bitter progressive in-fighting within the Democratic party and the misbehavior of one state’s governor to feminism’s failures seems, well, a wild leap even for Elizabeth Wurtzel. I’ve been a fan of Wurtzel for years; her Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women had moments of stunning insight; more than many of her peers who got book deals in the 1990s, Wurtzel had an uncanny ability to connect her personal struggles to those of women everywhere. And her first book, Prozac Nation, is likely to be read years from now by social historians not yet born, eager to understand middle-class adolescent anxieties in fin-de-siecle America. And as much as I have admired Wurtzel’s work in the past, her op-ed this morning struck me as both confused and silly.

Wurtzel cites a raft of statistics to indicate that women are still not equal to men:

Walk onto the trading floor of any of the hedge funds that crowd the Lever House building in Manhattan and hardly a female face will be seen who is not a secretary or an assistant. Enter the software shops of Silicon Valley, go to the rows of terminals where geeky computer programmers design cleverly crafted new media. They are mostly smart boys, playing with their toys. Everything that keeps our economy running is run by men. Yes, of course there are women around — no one needs to remind me that Meg Whitman was the powerhouse behind EBay — but these are still treehouse atmospheres, boys’ clubs.

For all the dynamic, visible women who are chief executives — like the CEOs of Xerox and Kraft — only 16% of corporate officers and 17% of large law firm partners are female. After all this time. Meanwhile, women still make 80 cents on the man’s dollar. And, for whatever reason, women who do the exact same work but are also mothers make 10 cents less, according to Anne Alstott of Yale Law School. It seems that the only industries in which women earn more than their male counterparts are pornography and prostitution.

All valid points, but hardly proof that feminism has failed. Women were making less than 60 cents on the dollar when I was in elementary school; we can agree that the pace of change has been heartbreakingly slow while still celebrating that change has happened. But Wurtzel is in a strangely defeatist mood, perhaps playing on the mainstream media’s longing to declare feminism dead. And most maddeningly, she plays the navel-gazing game of placing the blame for the lack of progress on, you guessed it, women:

As with everything, the women’s movement is partly to blame because back in the 1990s, when the Third Wave was going strong, we advocated sexual freedom, lipstick glamour, a joyous embrace of femininity, an affectionate embrace of men. I appeared topless on the cover of one of my books, a decision I stand by still. I am proud that Naomi Wolf published a book called “Promiscuities” and that Katie Roiphe wrote a book called “The Morning After.” I am really proud that Susan Faludi came out with the brilliant “Backlash.” But I don’t think the idea that you could own your own orgasm was ever intended to teach college coeds that it is a good idea to spend spring break in a shower with your roommate in a motel room in Daytona Beach having a lesbian encounter for the cameras of “Girls Gone Wild.” That’s not feminism!

Yeah, that’s it, Elizabeth. You posed semi-nude on the cover of “Bitch” and you, Naomi Wolf, and Katie Roiphe gave rise to Joe Francis and the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon. Relax, as good and as important as much of your work — and that of your generational cohort — was, it neither defined nor ruined feminism. Naomi Wolf has discovered Jesus and you’re doing whatever you’re doing (hope that the residuals from Prozac Nation are nice), but the fact is, you massively exaggerate your own importance when you suggest that the movement hasn’t been the same since you got out of the game, or when you lament that you somehow failed. Elizabeth, the Third Wave is going strong. The fact that you’re not riding the crest any longer doesn’t mean that other, newer, more fundamentally optimistic voices haven’t emerged. A new generation of young feminists, schoolgirls when Prozac Nation came out, are writing books. They aren’t nude on the cover, but they’re not shy; Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte (whose new book is available this week!) are just two young feminists who have become the public face of a 175 year-old movement whose successes have been immense and whose future is bright.

Suggesting that feminism has failed because it hasn’t eradicated misogyny is a bit like lamenting that enduring racism proves that the Civil War was all for naught. I agree that it is often easy to get discouraged, both by what remains to be done and by the vocal and often vicious opposition of those fundamentally opposed to women’s equality. There is reason to be frustrated, but reason too to be deeply optimistic. My women’s studies classes are packed, as are those of my colleagues. Elizabeth, you’d be pleased to know that more of my students identify as feminists today than did ten years ago, when you published “Bitch”. And if you consider the tremendous work done globally by organizations like Women Thrive, there is cause for excitement and hope.

Feminists are fighting a multi-front war against everything from global poverty to the hyper-sexualization of the young. Though I sure hope we’re not planning to be in Iraq for 100 years, as John McCain suggests, I appreciate the Arizona senator’s willingness to think long-term. Those of us engaged in a different fight with a different enemy would do well to adopt a bit of McCain’s cheerfully pugnacious confidence that no matter what, no matter how long, we will prevail.

Elizabeth, I’ll bet you’ve got another book in you. But please, don’t write a tired mea culpa about all the things that your generation got wrong; sister woman, it’s not all about you. Use that acid prose of yours for the cause again. And spend some time reading Jessica and Amanda, read through the feminist blogosphere. And read about the women in Nicaragua living on a dollar a day. They are the ones who most need an active and inspired feminist movement; defeatism hurts them first and most.