March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD). In most of the world, it is an

important holiday recognizing the struggles of women for equality. Most of

what my generation of feminists fought for has been won. Yet women labour

longer under the double day, still face the fear of violence, and are subject to

even worse pressures to fit into an impossible model of beauty.

And men still hold a lock on power. While some women have reached the

highest echelons of power in government and the corporate world, they are

still a handful. Patriarchy is still alive and well even if some women have been

Feminism needs to reinvent itself to deal with these new realities. Third

wave feminists have begun to redefine feminism but their

Clearly, women today (at least in places like the United States, and in European nations like England, where Woolf's Judith would have lived, had she actually existed) have gained many more rights, freedoms, and privileges than any woman would have had in Shakespeare's time. These include, as Jennifer Conley notes, Any woman wishing, today, to train to become an actress, playwright, or both (or doctor, accountant, astronaut, etc.), would not find the obstacles Judith would have found.

victims questions which suggested they were somehow responsible for the

Starting in the 1950's, with the leadership of feminists like Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex); Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique, and later, The Second Stage); Germane Greer (The Female Eunuch) and others, women began, then, to gain greater access than ever before in world history, to colleges; universities; graduate and professional schools; well-paying jobs; equal pay for equal work, and protection against gender discrimination and sexual harassment, at work and elsewhere. Due to the enormous success of those early and brave feminists of bringing about fundamental changes, much for the better, in the lives of everyday women, feminism began to be seen, in the years of the immediate run-up to the 21st century, as irrelevant. Smaller groups, like the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), began to think it necessary to move beyond feminism, toward a more relevant contemporary approach to women's "post-feminist" issues. In response, in 1997 Jennifer Coburn wrote, in the "Don't Cry for Feminism: It's Still Alive":

men and women have equal job opportunities in the United States. Thirty-

To have a voice is to be human. To have something to say is to be a person.

consciousness-raising, the picture is frighteningly clear: more women

The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a small circle of beltway

the term "feminism" in the United States today largely means the . . . ideology

crime. Prior to the women's movement, there was no terminology to define

Some common words found in the essay are:
Organization Women, Forum IWF, Life Cycle, Day IWD, Feminist Revolution, Carnell July, Woolf's Gilligan's, Judith Judith's, Female Eunuch, Jennifer Conley, women's movement, feminist movement, 21st century, virginia woolf, themselves feminists, 20th century, percent women, identifying themselves feminists, forum iwf, carol gilligan, women's forum, virginia woolf describes, women's forum iwf, independent women's forum, mid-to-late 20th century,
Approximate Word count = 2171
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)