What the 2012 Election Means for Women and for Feminism

Article here. Excerpt:

'The main takeaway for feminists in all this is simple: Feminism wins at the ballot box, especially if you’re looking at a high voter turnout election like this one. While our opposition is loud and powerful, the reality is that we’ve been making our arguments for decades to the public, and it looks like the public actually agrees, even if the word “feminist” continues to be treated like a dirty word. It’s not just that candidates who protect and expand women’s rights won, but candidates who revealed the ugly streak of misogyny lurking under a feigned concern for “life”—such as Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin—grossed the voters out, and were voted down in elections they would have easily won if they could have restrained themselves.

I think the reason for this is two-fold and simple. First, Americans really prioritize thinking of themselves as fair people, and the issues of feminism really can be boiled down to issues of fairness. The other reason, which Obama emphasized in the second debate, is that liberal feminists have really driven home the message that when women do better, everyone does better. While there’s still lingering cultural anxiety over myths such as the belief that it’s better for kids to have a stay-at-home mother, by and large, people know how far women have come and how much better the lives of everyone, including men and children, are for it.'