# Posted 7:47 AM by Anonymous  

IN THE WASHINGTON POST, George F. Will writes a scathing criticism of women's studies textbooks and the debasement of feminism. His assertions, based on a book by Christina Solba, (Lying in a Room of One's Own: How Women's Studies Textbooks Miseducate Students), range from a criticism of one textbook's embracement of postmodernism to another's insistence on the importance of the wage gap. Indeed, Will is correct to point out that the calculation of the wage gap is incomplete-it fails to note the conscious choice that many women make to take lower paying jobs in favor of more flexible schedules. Still, there exists an undeniable wage gap and while it is probably less pronounced than many feminists admit, it seems a bit callous to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Sure women's studies textbooks still have antiquated assertions about "the patriarchy" and "internalized oppression"--two with which Will takes particular issue--but given the relative shortness in length and history of the contemporary women's movement, is it really so surprising (and so horrible) that the women writing these books are still wrapped up in a wave of the feminist movement that has since passed? The women writing these textbooks are of course the same ones who burned their bras and marched on Washington. They are the ones who attended consciousness raising meetings when they still actually meant something. Perhaps their language seems a little outdated and militant in our current power-woman age of equality, but can you blame them?

While Will makes the important point that this information should be taken with a grain of salt, it needn't be overstated. Indeed, his article is condescending at times. We shouldn't underestimate the feminists of today-the college students who will be "miseducated" by these books. We can think for ourselves, thank you very much. Although feminist ideas have certainly shifted, it's not so bad to remember how it all started. Indeed, it reminds us how far past generations have taken us. And that while today it is unnecessary to raise consciousness or speak of the myth of marriage, it is important not to take that fact for granted. Sure, these books overstate the obvious. But feminism has not fallen as Will argues--only our image of what it once was.
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