THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN how the modern women's movement changed america

Feminism has never had a single voice, strategy, or unifying tactic, but it has inspired people, and inspires them still, with the grand, radical notion that a baby should not have its future determined by its gender any more than by the weather. 

That vision has motivated people to transform their society in dramatic ways (gaining women the right to vote or get an education) and in incremental, even symbolic, ways (like choosing your haircut or keeping your own last name). 

Everyone, it seems, has her own definition of feminism. Here's mine: Feminism's not a group or a membership oath or an action plan. Like Marxism, it's a way of thinking: When you study power--who's got it and how it's used--you consider gender. Feminists taught us to look at power relations between people as well as between races or states; within families, as well as within worksites; in bed, in church, or in the movie studio, as well as on Capitol Hill.