How many of us have received a phone call from our mothers these past few weeks, demanding to know why young women aren’t lining up behind Hillary Clinton? It’s the question that launched a thousand think pieces, some of them going so far as to declare second-wave feminism dead among millennial women. And indeed, Bernie Sanders drew an impressive percentage of the female vote in New Hampshire’s presidential primary last week, performing especially well among women under 30.
It’s puzzling and exasperating for many feminists that with the first real chance of a female US president on the table, college-age women just don’t seem that into it. Feminist icons Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright both recently vented these frustrations, making statements they later walked back.
But from our vantage point as women in our 30s, it’s not so surprising that very young women don’t feel the same excitement about a competitive, hyperqualified female candidate for the presidency that their mothers, aunts, and older sisters do. For them, the world may seem like a much more equal place than it actually is.
Read the full op-ed on Vox.
