Losing Our Feminist Leaders

By Jessica Valenti, AlterNet. Posted February 8, 2006.

America lost three amazing leaders in the course of only six days. Betty Friedan, Coretta Scott King and Wendy Wasserstein all worked for change in their own distinct ways, but the impact they had on women's lives spanned class, race and generation lines.

Clearly, icons like Friedan, King and Wasserstein can't be replaced. But the work they started must continue. A crucial question begs to be asked: Who will take their place?

Friedan was best known for her groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique, which many credit with sparking the women's movement of the 1960s and '70s. Though critics have long noted that Friedan's work spoke to a specific group of women -- namely straight, white, and middle to upper class -- the housewives' "problem that has no name" resonated with enough women to start the mainstream second wave of feminism. A founder of the National Organization for Women and the organization's first president, Friedan continued to work on women's issues until her death at 85.

King's legacy was built on the work that her husband Martin Luther King Jr. began. After her husband's death, King devoted her life to working on nonviolence -- in 1969 she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. The Center focused its efforts on hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism, issues that King believed bred violence. King was also an ardent supporter of women's and gay rights. Up until her death she worked tirelessly on civil rights.

Like King and Friedan, Wasserstein also spoke to an entire generation of women -- she just did it on stage. Since the 1970s, Wasserstein wrote plays that dealt with women's daily lives and their struggle with unrealistic social expectations. Wasserstein's best known play, "The Heidi Chronicles," won Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle awards for best play and earned her a Pulitzer Prize.

All amazing women. All leaders in their fields. And while there isn't much doubt that their work will be continued, there is some worry as to who will do it.

In a time when the so-called "opt-out revolution" reigns supreme in the media and mainstream columnists unconvincingly tell women that the "power is in the kitchen," we need a continuation of Friedan's work more than ever. Thankfully there are women like Linda Hirshman out there who not only debunk the happy housewife myth, but completely obliterate it. Wasserstein fans can rest easy -- people like Sarah Jones and the Guerrilla Girls are making strides for women in the arts, whether on stage or in masks. And of course, the growing opposition to the current administration and invasion of Iraq is building amazing momentum for the movement for nonviolence and civil rights.

It's clear that women are doing the work -- but where are the new icons? Is it that a successful women's movement simply doesn't need icons anymore, or are they out there just waiting to be recognized by a mainstream that still doesn't take kindly to feminism?

The idea of a new crop of mainstream feminist leaders is met with some wariness when talking with younger women. For many young women, especially those who work in grassroots organizations or who have taken their activism online, the idea of a feminist icon or leader seems a bit passe.

Jessica Valenti is the executive editor of Feministing.

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