Authors Help Young Women Connect With Feminism 

Manifesta: 
Young Women, Feminism 
and the Future
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards
Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Alyson Ward 
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

   Today’s twentysomething women have trouble finding their place in feminism. Too young to claim membership in the Gloria Steinem-powered Second Wave — but too old to be bolstered by the “girl power’’ movement aimed at young girls of today — the daughters of the liberating ‘70s often struggle with their feminist identity. 
   This new book helps articulate those issues for Third Wave women. “Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future,’’ by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards was published last fall and has generated a steady buzz among feminists. 
   Richards says “Manifesta’’ was “created to fill a gap in the lives of young women, like me, who yearn for a connection to feminism.’’ It’s a nod to feminism’s history and an effort to revive the movement’s spirit in a new way. 
   Today’s young women were the first generation to be told that “girls can do anything boys can do.’’ Often criticized by the Second Wave for our lack of activism, we’re a group with multiple factions and varied experiences, a bit too disjointed (and sometimes too comfortable) to mobilize the way our foremothers did. 
   “Manifesta’s’’ authors, both born in 1970, embody the uneasy transition between the Second and Third Wave. Baumgardner, a free-lance writer, has worked as a writer and editor for Ms. magazine. Richards is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation, the national organization for young feminists. 
   Both authors have a full sense of the work done by our foremothers, but “Manifesta’’ is definitely a Third Wave book. 
   Baumgardner and Richards discuss why various groups of feminists aren’t as connected as they need to be, and they examine the delicate, uneasy relationship between Second and Third Wave feminists. They encourage activism — organized and individual — and point to ways young women can carry the torch without forgetting or sublimating the issues that matter to us. Primarily, though, “Manifesta’’ inspires young feminists to do something — anything — to get involved in a movement that is still alive and still needed.