The Thought Project - Episode 42 - Interview with Lynn Chancer

CUNY Graduate Center

The Women’s movement for equal rights has been under continual siege by right-wing forces since the US Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision in making access to first trimester abortions legal in 1993. Progress in equal pay has been slower, despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, thus resulting in Congressional efforts that passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009. Arguably, the women’s movement and feminism itself was rebooted in the aftermath of the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton, considered one of the most qualified persons to ever run for the presidency, was defeated by Donald Trump, a candidate who ran for office noted for his personal denigration of women. In the shocking aftermath of this election, the women’s march took place in January 2017, the largest demonstration in US history that went global. Professor Lynn S. Chancer, a lifelong feminist scholar, sociologist and faculty member at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, examines these issues and more, by putting them into context in her newly released book: After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking back a Revolution, published by Stanford University Press, 2019.