A third wave?
In their publicity for this year's International Women's Day march and rally, the Sydney organisers suggested that this year could herald the beginning of a "third wave" of feminism.
If the suffragists of early this century were the first wave, and consciousness-raising and "personal is political" slogans were features of the second, what will be the issues focussed on by the third?
Some feminists — lawyer and author Jocelynne Scutt, for example — argue against using the notion of "waves" at all, saying that the movement for equality has been continuous for at least the whole of this century. In one sense, they are right. Feminism continued to change lives right through from the active early '70s into the relative lull in activity in the 1980s.
But then, as recent attacks on women's rights internationally show, it is not enough simply to identify, as the majority of women today do, with the aims of the women's movement. A new round of political activity is going to be necessary to hang on to what has been gained and to move on.
Perhaps it is a little premature, but Sydney IWD collective members, at least, are convinced that a significant resurgence of interest in feminist ideas — and a willingness to take action around them — is taking place right now.
Violence against women and the portrayal of women in the media are themes around which a new generation of young women — many of whom have ingested the "girls can do anything" slogans of their more enlightened career advisers — appear to be radicalising.
These are themes making their way into the mass media: Naomi Wolfe's The Beauty Myth was published just as the extent of eating disorders among young women desperate to conform to increasingly unrealistic media portrayals was becoming more well known. Now the NSW Liberal government has announced a special inquiry into the problem of nine- and 10-year-old schoolgirls battling with their first diets.
In the US, media coverage of the allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas became what some observers called a "national teach-in" on the issue. The "date rape" debates, and the threatened overturn of the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling have kept women's issues in the headlines.
Then there's the celebrated backlash against feminism itself. It can be seen negatively — the power of the mass media to tell us our problems stem from too much change, too many gains for women, rather than not enough.
But the positive side was clear from the television news in NSW on March 6: the backlash was providing a new rallying point for young women. Sydney Girls High students crowding around stalls buying copies of the Family Planning Association's much-attacked e (or "Sex Diary" as the media calls it) firmly told interviewers that information was their right, and that they were not interested in a return to the moral dark ages.
As US feminist Gloria Steinem told Time, a backlash shows that you must be doing something right. Once you get "a majority consciousness change, you also get a backlash. It's both an inevitable tribute to success and a danger. The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. After all, a movement is only people moving."
By Tracy Sorensen