ABSTRACT
TWENTIETH-CENTURY FEMINISM was many things: a set of ideas, a political and social movement, and a cultural renaissance. It was a force for change and a guide for living. Feminism was the site of the reinvention of the category “woman” in the 1970s and of its deconstruction in the 1980s and 1990s. This phase in the history of feminism seems to be ending: in its episodic history, giving rise to the metaphor of waves, we in the West seem to be at an ebb tide. This is not at all the case in many other parts of the world, especially in the countries of Asia, where feminism is very alive and well indeed, and seems to have some of the enthusiasm and vigor Western feminism had twenty years ago. But in the West, there is a general sense that the feminism of the past thirty years has come to some kind of ending. Now, in a new century, after more than thirty years of involvement in feminism in all these aspects, I ponder the meaning and future of the feminism that has helped shape my life.
