Modern Feminism: Steinem, Ginsburg, and the Women's Movement
This paper examines contemporary feminism through its most prominent leaders, intellectual foundations, and cultural expressions. Beginning with the historical roots established by Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir, the paper traces how figures such as Gloria Steinem and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have sustained and advanced the women's movement into the present day. It also explores feminism's reach into religion through Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz's mujerista theology, into academia through gender theory, and into popular culture through feminist artists like Cindy Sherman. The paper argues that modern feminism is a broad, multifaceted movement united by the shared goal of women's empowerment and self-determination, even as its members differ in approach, emphasis, and political orientation.
- Historical Roots of the Feminist Movement: Friedan, de Beauvoir, and early feminist philosophy
- Gloria Steinem and Women's Media Advocacy: Steinem's activism, media work, and reproductive rights
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Legal Feminism: Ginsburg's Supreme Court role and women's legal rights
- Feminism in Popular Culture and the Backlash: Disney, media representation, and cultural counter-movements
- Feminism in Religion and Academia: Mujerista theology and academic gender theory
- Feminist Art and Identity: Cindy Sherman: Sherman's photography and feminist self-expression
- Conclusion: Modern feminism as diverse but unified movement
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper synthesizes a wide range of feminist voices — political, religious, academic, and artistic — demonstrating that feminism is not monolithic but rather a broad and evolving movement.
- It grounds abstract theoretical concepts (Butler's gender performativity, de Beauvoir's "becoming") in the concrete actions and statements of real public figures, making the ideas accessible.
- The inclusion of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz's mujerista theology and Cindy Sherman's visual art broadens the paper beyond mainstream political feminism, showing genuine range in research and argumentation.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses a compare-and-contrast structure across multiple figures and domains to build a cumulative argument. Rather than treating each feminist leader in isolation, it draws recurring thematic threads — reproductive rights, self-definition, equality under the law — through every section, reinforcing its central claim that modern feminism shares common goals despite its diversity of expression.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with historical context (Friedan, de Beauvoir, Butler), then profiles two prominent living feminists (Steinem, Ginsburg) in substantial detail. It pivots to cultural backlash, then expands outward into religion (Isasi-Diaz), academic gender theory, and finally feminist art (Sherman). The conclusion ties all threads together by returning to the foundational theme of women's right to "become." This funnel-and-expand structure moves from history to present, and from politics to culture.
Historical Roots of the Feminist Movement
Feminism today is especially guided by the feminists of old — prominent leaders of the past who continue to forge the path ahead for the modern women's movement. These are leaders like Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court and Gloria Steinem of the Women's Media Center. Many other prominent figures represent feminism today and are actively working toward the advocacy of women's rights across social, political, economic, and religious spectrums. This paper discusses the movement and the individuals who make it up as it exists in the present day.
To understand feminism today and the way its advocates represent it, it is important to understand how feminism came into being and how it has evolved.
Betty Friedan was shaped by much of what went on in early twentieth-century America. An avid activist and strong supporter of equal rights for women, Friedan took the opportunity on the fiftieth anniversary of the granting of women's suffrage to organize a strike for equality. Her book The Feminine Mystique essentially sparked the feminist movement. She claimed "that she came to political consciousness out of a disillusionment with her life as a suburban housewife" (Horowitz, 1998, p. 2) and wrote the book on feminism, literally, as a means of reinventing herself — much as Jewish producers in Hollywood had done. Not only did Friedan reinvent herself, she enabled millions of women to reinvent themselves as well. In this way she followed the mantra of Simone de Beauvoir, who stated that a woman is not what one is born but rather what one becomes (Beauvoir, 2004, p. 51).
Following the philosophical premises of Nietzsche and the postmoderns, who view life as a series of "repetitions" in which one endlessly strives to "become" what socio-historical trends stipulate (Kundera, 1984, pp. 4–6), Butler identifies an unavoidable obstacle in the act of "becoming." It is forever constrained by unforgiving terms and categories that prevent total consummation. One may spend an entire life trying to "become" a woman — but it remains an elusive identity (Butler, 1990) because it is still defined with respect to manhood. Today's feminists strive to actualize womanhood and define themselves apart from men.
Gloria Steinem and Women's Media Advocacy
To this end there is the work of Gloria Steinem, who has been a feminist advocate since the 1960s, making her one of the old guard still active in the movement today. Steinem founded Ms. magazine, a medium focused on removing the "male"-based orientation from the idea of feminism. She called for women's liberation in a 1969 article, and just as Friedan's book catapulted her to the front lines of the movement, so too did Steinem's article do the same for her. Today, Steinem has joined the likes of Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan in founding the Women's Media Center, which works to put women in the spotlight in media productions. She lectures widely and continues to be a leading voice for feminists. At eighty years old, Steinem is a true representative of the old guard.
Steinem has also advocated strongly for abortion rights for women. An article in a 2006 issue of Ms. was entitled "We Had Abortions" and described the impact of an article that had appeared more than thirty years earlier, before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. That earlier article had included the names of women who had had abortions and were proud to admit it publicly; Steinem's name, along with those of other prominent women, was included.
Steinem, like Friedan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is of Jewish descent; however, her political focus is primarily on the advocacy of women's rights and women's empowerment. Her focus today is the result of her realization in 1969 that, as a woman who had had an abortion, she was a person taking charge of her own life (Cooke, 2011). For Steinem, the issue has always been fundamentally about reproductive rights: she believes men think they have the right to control a woman's reproductive cycle, and what feminism has taught her is that they do not. It is "Politics 101," she says (Cooke, 2011). Thus, she has been pro-choice since her epiphany in 1969 and leads a chorus of voices asserting a policy of pro-choice politics.
Steinem worked for Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential bid and still believes Clinton would have made a better president than Obama, because unlike Obama she is a fighter when it comes to women's issues (Cooke, 2011). Steinem's focus is expansive in the sense that she sees society as a whole in need of radical change — from laws to perspective to social mores. She highlights the arrest of French leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn as indicative of the great strides America has made in letting women know they have rights: that woman "knew" she did not have to accept his abuse (Cooke, 2011). Steinem's attitude confirms that feminism is succeeding in today's world: its perspective is being understood and embraced in more and more settings, especially on college campuses where she frequently speaks. She cites instances in which her late husband would travel with her on speaking tours and hundreds of young women would surround him, marveling at the fact that one could be a feminist and still have a husband (Cooke, 2011). Steinem views this as a success for the movement, which is about educating the next generation — a goal she pursues through media (her magazine), politics (her support of Clinton), and speaking tours. In this way, Steinem remains one of the most important women in feminism today.
Steinem is also known for having questioned the role of transsexuality within feminism. She wrote in 1984 that "if the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?" — suggesting that a focus on transsexuality redirected feminism away from reproductive rights and women's empowerment toward what she then characterized as bodily alteration (Steinem, 1984, p. 206). In the wake of criticism from other feminists, Steinem revised her position, stating that transgender individuals should not be marginalized but rather embraced, defended, and supported.
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