The feminist movement in the 1970s helped create the social conditions that brought about Roe v. Wade. But will modern feminism have the coherence to determine what comes after? 

The big idea: The shifting state of feminism in America today

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If history repeats itself, we’re in a particularly uncanny moment of déjà vu.

In 1973, the United States withdrew, defeated, from a protracted, brutal war; debated the right to an abortion in the Supreme Court; and weathered a tense geopolitical standoff with Russia, with no end in sight. Sound familiar?

Fifty years later, America is contending with many of the same forces. This week, after a draft majority opinion to overrule Roe v. Wade was leaked, some Americans asked how much had really changed in the intervening years, specifically regarding women’s rights.

So below, we take a closer look at that question, asking: If the right to abortion was a central pillar of the second-wave feminist movement, what does the public reaction to the leak reveal about the state of feminism today?

The question of progress

When “The Feminine Mystique” was published in 1963, catalyzing feminism’s “second wave,” it created a reaction so intense that Betty Friedan could later write another book about the things women said to her about the first one (“It Changed My Life”). The claims that Ms. Friedan made were revolutionary — and the movement inspired by her work was regularly dismissed as radical.

Now, the concept of feminism is so mainstream, it has become a lucrative market for retailers, and the very currency of corporate credibility. A majority of American women say “feminist” describes them well, according to a Pew study from 2020. This is, in many ways, a testament to the work of women over the last century to normalize support for gender justice and women’s rights — specifically those who campaigned in the 1960s and ’70s.

But the widespread acceptance of feminism as a concept hasn’t necessarily translated into political, social or economic equity.

For example, there are more women in public office today than there were 50 years ago. But at the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for roughly another 130 years. Similarly, women around the world have more legal rights than they have ever had before — but they have, on average, three-quarters of the legal rights of men.

Still, this type of relative progress is deemed by some to be sufficient.