Article Tags: What Happened to the Women's Movement?

What Happened to the Women’s Movement? An Exchange: Different Strategies are Necessary Now

by Joan Acker

October 1, 2001

Barbara Epstein’s answer to “What Happened to the Women’s Movement?” (Monthly Review, May 2001) explains much of the decline of the intense, exciting, radical and socialist feminist organizing of the 1960s and 1970s, with its visions of societal transformation and women’s emancipation. However, I think that she underemphasizes, or even ignores, some important parts of a comprehensive answer. These have to do with the daunting reality facing revolutionary visions, the strength of opposition to women’s equality with men, and changes in economic and political relations that now seem to require new visions and ways of organizing

What Happened to the Women’s Movement? An Exchange: The Broader Picture

by Hester Eisenstein

October 1, 2001

I take it as given that in publishing this piece Barbara Epstein sought to stir up controversy. I take it also that her effort seeks to revive feminism, rather than to bury it. And I agree with her notion that the situation of the women’s movement should be a subject for critical analysis. But I am surprised that such an acute observer of social movements should paint a picture so isolated from the larger political and economic context. In this response I will try to add some pieces of the broader picture.

What Happened to the Women’s Movement? An Exchange: Response to Acker and Eisenstein

by Barbara Epstein

October 1, 2001

I’m very pleased that Joan Acker and Hester Eisenstein have responded to my article. Since the questions that they raise overlap, I will address their responses together. I think that the questions they have raised are important for a discussion not only of the current state of the women’s movement, but more broadly, of the current state of progressive politics in the United States. I want to thank them for having taken the discussion that I started further.

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