Modern Feminism & Structural Gender Bias

This topic is hard for me to fully articulate, partly because I am just beginning to understand my own thoughts. Let me begin with a quote:

"We who like the children of Israel have been wandering in the wilderness of prejudice and ridicule for forty years feel a peculiar tenderness for the young women on whose shoulders we are about to leave our burdens...The younger women are starting with great advantage over us. They have the results of our experience; they have superior opportunities for education; they will find a more enlightened public sentiment for discussion; they will have more courage to take the rights which belong to them...Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is yet a dream of the future."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
at the age of 72, speaking to the
International Council of Women, 1888

Perhaps Stanton is right--today's women (in certain countries) have access to greater resources. However, I still have this feeling of "I belong to the wrong time period" when I read great feminist writers of the past. A great compilation, Feminism, The Essential Historical Writings, by Miriam Schneir, features tidbits from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Sanger, Abigail Adams, Virginia Woolf...the list goes on.

My question to myself has been: I read such works like a kid in a candy store. I soak it all up, wish I were there, wish I were a part of it--but why? What makes feminism so different now?

I have finally found my answer--and that is, now (western) society faces a different sort of gender bias. The first wave feminists fought contingent gender bias, that is behavior or stricture that is visible and clearly sexist; a cultural bias that constrains the choices of women. Example: excluding women from voting or owning property.

Two waves later, we face structural gender bias, which is opaque, socially implicit, and not visible--a bias toward a masculinist perspective. This would include differences in socialization for boys and girls, language, customs, etc. Generally, these are practices we take for granted.

So, to a certain extent, I challenge Stanton's statement. I think it is a much different experience to point out and fight against something explicit and wholly obvious. The challenge today is to point out the in-obvious, the invisible...

On top of this, feminist thought has developed more all together. The first wave movement was a middle/upper class movement--poor women were not so concerned with voting rights as with labor laws. The feminist evolution has expanded to include the intersections of sex with gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, etc.

I think that pushing these concepts is much more complex than pointing out that women are not allowed in school, (not to belittle that fight, because it was incredible and I wish I had been there).

How I will fight as a feminist--and I define that term to include fighting against homophobia, racism, classism, etc--is much more abstract. I have been wondering, rather mentally beating myself, about what I will do to further the movement...when I will begin...and what changes I will make. Then I realized, simply through being myself, through my own beliefs and goals...I am advancing the cause.