the last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women. This counterassault is largely insidious: in a kind of pop-culture version of the Big Lie, it stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall.

The women's movement. . . has proved women's own worst enemy.

Divorced men are more likely to meet their car payments than their child support obligations.

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.

My goal is to be accused of being strident.

Hungary is now on the brink of becoming a neo-fascist state.

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