Throwback Thursday | Feminists and Feminism, Yesterday and Today

posted on: Mar 5, 2015

Do you consider yourself a feminist? How would you define the word?

Is a feminist “one who believes in, and is committed to, the idea of true equality between the sexes,” as Betty Friedan says in the Times article (PDF) above?

Or is labeling oneself a feminist still, to some, a “militant” stance that implies, as a woman in this 1982 article says, that one is “a lesbian who hates men”? How are current projects like “I need feminism because…” contributing to the conversation?

A search on the word “feminist” in The Times returns 18,692 results. We restrained ourselves to linking to just a few of the most germane below, but we invite you to use Times Machine on your own to examine the cultural and political history of feminism as The Times reported on it from the earliest mention (1897) to today.

You can also find many more resources on our Women’s History Month page and, at the bottom of this post, a simple exercise you can do with any day’s Times to examine the role of women in the world, yesterday and today.

Source: learning.blogs.nytimes.com