When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.

In place of equal respect, the nation offered women the Miss America beauty pageant, established in 1920-the same year women won the vote.

In the '30s and '40s, the search for Hungarian national identity led famously to an alliance with Hitler and the destruction of more than a half million of the nation's Jews. And here we are now, more than 70 years later, witnessing a resurgence of xenophobia and authoritarianism, and not just in Eastern Europe.

All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.

I write to figure out what I am thinking: What does my life mean?

As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.

I've never believed that women have some special, essentialist qualities, or were more nurturing, cooperative, and morally superior.