Backlash: The Undeclared War Against the American Woman

I have studed the Second-wave feminists in the past, and am acquainted with Friedan's innovations in The Feminine Mystique and the militant feminism of Millett's Sexual Politics, but I am not at all familiar with the Third-wave feminists, as I am assuming this is the movement Faludi's critics would ascribe her to.

What I had read about Third-wave feminism left me with the impression that it was essentially the expansion of the women's liberation movement, and would focus upon international issues rather than the rights of women in a single country. I anticipated that a backlash in politics and the media might occur after the Second-wave and subsist for at least a decade, but I did not imagine the overwhelming result which Faludi describes in the articles we've read for today.

Faludi highlights the repeated and widespread use of post-Second-wave feminism as a scapegoat by American society. Understandably, what makes this situation complicated is the lack of equal pay compensate despite protecting legislation, but the cultural biases are no less frustrating. Faludi claimed that infertility is still considered a strictly women's issue and that the media outright manipulates the feminist image and suppress further activity within the movement.

I consider it astonishing that women are still misrepresented in society and find feminist studies that much more worthwhile for this very reason.