Though I more often ponder the through-lines and continuities, the differences between feminisms of different generations sometimes just kinda hit you over the head. Note the difference in these titles:

There’s feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters. (Be sure to check out Rebecca Traister’s interview in Salon this week.)

And there’s former 9-5 director Ellen Bravo’s new book, Taking on the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation.

‘Nuf said.

On other fronts, throwing a bone to those of us (ok, us writers) who are obsessed with the question of how other books actually sell, the New York Times reports today on sales figures for a number of recent “mommy books,” including Leslie Bennetts’. (thank you, Laura!) Word on the street on how they sell? They don’t.

A new study from the American Association of University Women finds that just a year after graduating from college, women earn just 80 percent of what men make. Ten years down the line, women make 69 percent of what men earn.

The finding comes at an interesting moment, given the popular argument that women earn less simply because of their lifestyle choices. Check out Broadsheet’s trademark savvy reporting on the study for more.

And while we’re on it, a few excerpts from a “pop quiz” I’m developing in conjunction with my book – because I’m always surprised at how often women ourselves overestimate how we, as a sex, are doing. Go on, take the little test. No one’s looking. I’ll post answers tomorrow.

In 2007, for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns:

A. the same
B. 84 cents
C. 77 cents
D. 56 cents

In 2007, women make up what percent of the U.S. Senate?

A. 3%
B. 14%
C. 33%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of women are tenured professors?

A. 7%
B. 16%
C. 20%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women?

A. 8%
B. 15%
C. 26%
D. 50%

(Answers posted tomorrow!)

It’s a hot week for feminism here in NYC, and particularly for two of my favorite under-30 feminist mentors:

Courtney Martin hits the road with Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, while personal hero and a founder of feministing.com Jessica Valenti goes offline this week with her first book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters – a book she says she wished she had read as a teenager. Damn. Me too.

Excerpts of each are here:
Courtney on AlterNet
Jessica in The Guardian

For those of you not yet addicted to feministing.com, some classic, vintage words from Jess — who gets an undue amount of public flack from conservative detractors and misogynist wackos — may sway you to check it out:

Where criticisms about my loud, opinionated ways might bother me if I wasn’t a feminist, the fact that I am means that I know that there’s nothing wrong with me, but only with a world that doesn’t want women to speak their minds.

Such words have got to sound familiar to “second-wave” veterans. I’ll be eager to see what the response is from an older generation to these new, important voices. Jessica wrote her book because, among other things, she believes that “All women, especially younger women, deserve feminism in their lives – and most don’t have access to the university courses or feminist mentors who might introduce them to it.”

A third book out this week by another next-generation writer I have yet to meet but already admire: Kara Jesella’s How Sassy Changed My Life. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a behind-the-scenes, warts-and-all look at the magazine’s office culture, including sections on the glossy’s coverage of feminism, celebrity and girl culture….[T]he book—written in a style reminiscent of the magazine itself—is a testament to a publication that changed the face of teen media.” Sounds like a fun romp through the recent past at the very least.

And as if these three offerings weren’t enough for one week, check out this tidbit from Bjork on feminism (courtesy of feministing.com)

Feminism dead my a**.

The fabulous journalist James Ridgeway has a really important piece in Mother Jones: “Mass Murderers and Women: What We’re Still Not Getting About Virginia Tech.”

And to counter all this week’s horrible awfulness, the Spring issue of Ms. magazine (on newsstands April 24) has an article by Nikki Ayanna Stewart in their new Women’s Studies Department on the uses of a women’s studies degree. It’s called “Transform the World.” Nikki, you bring us hope.

It may be cliche, but it’s true. Gen Xers of a progressive bent are known to wax nostalgic. Born too late, we feel we somehow “missed out” on the good ole days of badass activism — anti-war teach ins, Civil Rights sit-ins, feminist girlcotts, and the like. But today, when I read about a campus-wide Global Warming Teach In in the Boston Globe, my heart skipped a beat. Check it out – it’s taking place at Framingham University, next week.

As the Globe tells it, students in a ceramics course will be developing concept pieces based on their reactions to a global warming film. Government students will discuss the ongoing political debate and ramifications for public policy. Philosophy students will consider the moral and ethical considerations of how humans treat the Earth. Mathematics students will study the statistical rationale supporting global warming. In sociology professor Virginia Rutter’s class, students will analyze a recent report by the UN panel showing that impoverished nations, which have contributed the least to global warming, would potentially suffer the most from its consequences. Rutter will be asking students to answer the question, “What are reasonable burdens for people to take on?”

Rutter, one of the Teach In’s organizers, tells the Globe:

“We’re always looking for opportunities to connect the concepts and theories to things that are happening in the world, things that help people feel the vitality of things we’re engaged in….[When it comes to global warming, we] don’t have a horse in the race about what policies make sense…But we have an interest in putting it on the table so that as a community we can think about it.”

Sorry, Pam, but Virginia Rutter just became my new favorite sociologist.

As a postscript, maybe yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on so-called partial birth abortion — an UTTER assault on women’s reproductive health rights — will finally be the prompt that wakes us all up? Sit-ins, teach-ins, girlcotts — bring ’em on. We’re in deep shit here. Be sure to check out Lynn Harris’ coverage on the ruling Salon.

Two quick updates from the reading/s front:

Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters goes on sale today! Check out Courtney’s report from the front, on her blog. Great review by Holly Brubach in Sunday’s Style magazine. Courtney’s is one you don’t want to miss.

Second, mea culpa – and to my relief. In spite of an effectively provocative but somewhat misleading title (The Feminine Mistake) that SAHMs have taken offense too, perhaps missing the Friedan reference, Leslie Bennetts is very GOOD on structure in numerous places. Check out, for starters, the chapters titled “Opting Out” and “Opting Back In,” where she cites my new favorite sociologist, Pamela Stone, among others, extensively. And she incorporates some great structural zingers, like this one, from Sylvia Law: “This line about how women have to pick between having a family and having real work is sexist…When you say to women, and only women, ‘You have to pick,’ it’s a way of keeping women in their place by saying, ‘This is the way it is.’ The Times likes to tell the story as if the structures are immovable and you have to accept them.” Yeah, well, so do a lot of these books claiming to assuage women’s angst. But I digress.

The question remains: In an era (and in a blogosphere) in which savvy authors KNOW people have no qualms voicing an opinion without reading the book, is it fair — or disingenuous — for us to rail against those who judge our books by their covers when our titles are, for better or worse, intended to provoke?

So I’m doing research for some magazine articles I’m writing about cutting-edge couples in a (supposed) new era of equality and came across the following:

Based on a study of 120 in-depth interviews with young adults conducted between 1998-2003, NYU sociologist Kathleen Gerson reports that 3/4 of women said they plan to build a non-negotiable base of self-reliance and an independent identity in the world of paid work.

And according to other studies, there are fewer households with highly unequal divisions of family labor and more households with equal divisions than ever before — both in the US and across Europe. Turns out, if egalitarian divisions aren’t possible, what a husband wants and what a wife wants are often at odds. According to Gerson, “If a supportive, equal partnership is not possible, most women prefer individual autonomy over becoming dependent on a husband in a traditional marriage. Most men, however, if they can’t have an equal balance between work and parenting, fall back on a neo-traditional arrangement that allows them to put their own work prospects first and rely on a partner for most caregiving.”

So, um, what might this say about who’s really calling shots in those couples featured by Leslie Bennetts where the wives are staying home? Just a thought…

(All info drawn from the special Council on Contemporary Families issue of The American Prospect last month)

There’s a savvy read of Leslie Bennett’s NYPL LIVE event this week on Gawker, by the way, for those who missed it. (Thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussell for hipping me to it.)

I’m taking the liberty of pasting Heather Boushey’s comment on my previous post up here, in case folks don’t venture into the comments down there. It is as I thought: evidence, not interpretation. Thank you, Heather, for inserting the nuance. Why doesn’t this reality seem to get through the din???

Heather Boushey’s comment:

Sure, I’ll comment … I’ve run hundreds of regressions by now trying to sort out whether there is or is not a trend of declining women’s employment *because of children.* I haven’t found any real evidence that points to women being more likely to leave employment today, compared to 25 years ago or 5 years ago, because they have children at home.

What we know is that employment rates for men and women (moms and non-moms) declined after 2000, and while women’s employment rates have almost recovered to their 2000 levels, men’s have not.

We also know that women lost more jobs during the recession of 2001 than they had in the prior two recessions. They did not lose more jobs than men, but compared to women in prior recessions, the 2001 recession was hard on women workers. I tend to think of this as women moving closer to equality to men in their vulnerability to the business cycle. (Typically, in prior recessions, men have seen greater employment losses than women during recessions.)

When we isolate the effect of children on women’s employment, there is no increase. Does this mean that women are not leaving the workforce? No, but it does mean that we cannot identify children as the cause.

There is some evidence that husband’s income may be having a slightly — very slightly — larger downward pull on women’s employment in recent years. But, that’s not about motherhood.

As a researcher whose training is of the lit crit/historical persuasion (I am NOT nor have I ever been a social scientist, though there are times when I really wish I were!), I have a question for my friends of the economist/social scientist persuasion:

For those picking up this thread today, I’ve been blogging this week about Leslie Bennett’s book, The Feminine Mistake, as I read it. Much as I may disagree on certain (key) points, Leslie Bennetts is GOOD. Every time I silently voice an objection, she addresses it on the next page. But I have a more general question about journalists interpreting data when it comes to research on women/girls/families — and maybe experts from the Council on Contemporary Families crew can help us out here and set it straight.

Bennetts writes that “some feminists have challenged the very existence of a back-to-the-home trend on the grounds that more than two-thirds of all American mothers still participate in the labor force” (7) and that “[o]ther analysts have challenged the idea that we’re witnessing a resurgence of stay-at-home motherhood by attacking the news stories describing this phenomenon” (8). She calls analyses like those put forth by Heather Boushey “arguments.” I thought they were evidence. She calls them “denials” and invokes (critically, perhaps, but I think not) Linda Hirshman who refers to it all as the “it’s not happening” defense.

Which is it? Is it happening? Or not? Is the reading of the early 2000s recession as the reason for women’s labor-force dip interpretation — or fact?