Why feminists are despondent

From a January 9 Associated Press story:

America's feminist leaders and their critics agree on at least one current political fact: These are daunting times for the women's movement as it braces for another term of an administration it desperately wanted to topple.

"The next four years are going to be tough, so we must be tougher," National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy recently told supporters. "Our health, our rights, and our democracy are teetering on the brink."

To AP's credit, the article is reasonably balanced:

Beyond Washington, meanwhile, women are making impressive professional gains — as big-city police chiefs and university presidents, for example. They now comprise roughly half the enrollment in U.S. medical schools. And though a wage gap persists, woman now earn 80 percent of what men do, compared to 62 percent in 1980.

"Feminist leaders have failed to keep up with the times," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, whose writings are often critical of groups like NOW.

"Women have achieved parity with men in most fields," she said. "You'd think the feminists and women's studies professors would be celebrating, but in many ways they've never been more despondent."

Another conservative analyst of women's issues, Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum, said feminists "have increasingly marginalized themselves" by embracing an agenda that doesn't reflect most American women's priorities.

"They see government as the answer to all problems — as the national health care provider and day care provider," Lukas said. "And they have made unfettered access to abortion the absolute centerpiece of their movement... Their 'March for Women's Lives' last year seemed like a celebration of abortion."

Lukas and Sommers have it absolutely right. The modern feminist movement is not about gender equity or civil rights -- it's about abortion.