A Letter to Gail Collins: Please stop hating on young women

Dear Gail,

What were you thinking when you penned this letter to young American women? After listing the various obstacles facing women today — discrimination, sexual harassment, violence, oppression — you say:

What with all that, it looks like there’s plenty on your plate. And if you don’t feel like dwelling on the non-problems, if you automatically assume that a woman has as much right to have a terrific career and exciting adventures as any guy, that’s great. For the entire history of recorded civilization, people had ideas about women’s limitations, and their proper (domestic) place in the world. That all changed in my lifetime — came crumbling down. The fact that I got to see it, in the tiny sliver of history I inhabit, just knocks me out. You taking it for granted knocks me out.

On one hand, I kinda get it. This column (along with your new book) is a victory dance for feminist progress. The ability of young women to take inequality for granted … touchdown??? Thanks for the pat on the head, Gail. I am frankly a little appalled at your framing that young women need feminism like chimpanzees need water buffalo when in fact there are swaths of women in every demographic who have been skeptical about the movement.

Maybe I’m jaded, Gail.
But this prototypical young woman you are writing to — the one who couldn’t care less about gender
discrimination, who stumbles upon it at her first job in complete shock
— is the biggest myth you have perpetuated since you tried to call the Black man in the presidential race “disturbingly Ivy League.”
I am not going to front. I don’t have the regression analysis on young women and attitudes around gender. But when campus activity fairs
roll around and there are tables for a dozen gender-based
orgs, one can’t deny that the movement for gender equality is alive — and
that many young women are active participants. Yeah, many may not
even call it (gasp!) feminism. But I hear young women speak their
truths about gender marginalization every day, whether it is anorexia,
race, violence against women, economic justice, health care
discrimination, sex education, breast cancer or many other issues of
interest. Wish you could hear them, too.

I am getting tired of
having the work of young women rendered invisible in one
fell swoop by a few older feminists who clearly don’t take the time to
talk to listen to them. I would love to have more inter-generational dialogues about
feminism with women like you, Gail. But it’s difficult to know
where to begin, when your book bears
the title When Everything Changed. Everything has far from changed, Gail. You needn’t look any farther than the publication you write for, the New York Times, to know that the more things change, the more things stay the same:

The 20 top occupations of women last year [2007] were the same as half a
century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid,
hairdresser, cook and so on.

Further, the same article notes:

The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20
percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive
offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25
percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

I haven’t even begun to break down how women of color have had varied experiences when measuring progress from the ’60s. I’ll just say that my own mother and grandmother could have cared less about girdles and flight attendant jobs. Race discrimination and the right to care for one’s own children while serving in a domestic capacity for your white employer are some forms of sexism that saddled their lives decades ago and today. A narrative that takes into consideration some of these complexities don’t seem to be apparent in your letter to young women like me.

Mainly, Gail, I want you to know one thing: You can’t call it even yet. No matter how much “progress” you observe, now is the time to shed light on disparate treatment of women and girls. As a young feminist of color in the movement, the only thing that knocks me out is the tendency some feminists have to say the fight is over, when battle lines have been clearly drawn and the true victory has yet to be won.

In Sisterhood,
Rose S. Afriyie