"Days when you don't learn something can be a drag."

Caught between the civil rights movement and various hippie and anti-war groups of the New Left, the modern woman's liberation movement struggled to achieve recognition and coherence.

Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, organizations which one might think would've been sympathetic with the struggles of women, proved to be just as male dominated as society at large. This being the case, Rosen writes that the chaotic unraveling of Students for a Democratic Society fueled the real beginning of the women's movement.

At a time when many African-Americans involved in the struggle for civil rights decided that white involvement served as a hindrance to their cause, many women came to the same conclusion regarding men.

Now on their own, women sought to define themselves and their goals. What exactly should they be fighting for? Who would raise their children while they rallied and went to work? These were some of the questions they now grappled with. Nanci Hollander submitted for consideration what Rosen calls "striking" and "years ahead of its time," but what seems rather tame today:

Instead of women assuming the major responsibility for raising the children, the man and woman should assume and share the task equally. In order for this to work, however, society would first have to re-arrange work and make it more flexible.

Looking only at this aspiration, has it come to fruition in the U.S.? Do men and women share this task equally? Should they? I would argue that they should, but that they do not. As many strides as the women's movement has made over the years, I believe there is still much to be done in terms of full equality.

When women earn on average only 77% as men for the same work, then there is still something wrong. But this single statistic is arguably indicative of a more pervading societal attitude toward women and their value within society.

Photo: Alice Paul, New Jersey, National Chairman, Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Edmonston. ca. 1910-16. Library of Congress