Forty years ago John Clellon Holmes characterized that Beat generation of the early 1950s as a myriad of variant faces behind which a generational line of thinking was finding validation in the repetition of its expression. "What the hipster is looking for in his 'coolness'... is, after all, a feeling of somewhereness, not just another diversion. The young Republican feels that there is a point beyond which change becomes chaos... Both have had enough of homelessness, valuelessness, faithlessness." This observation could just as successfully be applied to the Generation X of today. Baby Boomer feminists had hoped, however, to breach any generational divide that might threaten the continuation of their cause. They've been somewhat disappointed. According to a poll recently conducted by R.H. Brushkin, only 16 percent of college women "definitely" considered themselves to be feminists.

Perusing the women's studies section of any bookstore reminds us that the charter members of feminism's second wave are maturing in age. The latest volumes published by Cathleen Rountree, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer discuss not gender issues of inequality but of aging and menopause. That feminists as a group are aging is a superfluous observation without understanding the fact that feminism--the very institution--is aging as well; a result of the failure of younger women to pull the mean age of a feminist down from its fast approach of 50 or to infuse the feminist platform with discussion of the problems pertaining to this new generation. But this point of contention is one not limited to the '90s decade. Feminists have wrestled with the problem of youthful conservatism and a lack of support for radical feminist ideology as far back as the late 1970s.

In her 1978 essay, "Why Young Women Are More Conservative," Gloria Steinem struggled to produce some plausible reasons for the apathy of the young. Many of her arguments were drawn from her own college years, which she laughingly admits were conservative--a mistake she blames on a young woman's desire to gain public, i.e., "patriarchal," approval. While Steinem conceded that women in their late teens and early 20s--generally students--are suspicious of continuing claims of female oppression, she offered a simple reason for their errors in judgment: "As students, women are probably treated with more equality than we ever will be again. For one thing, we're consumers. The school is only too glad to get the tuitions we pay..."

Were these really Steinem's words? Since when have feminists ever admitted that as consumers women are treated fairly? It's been widely reported and believed that any woman's attempt to purchase a car, an outfit, a hair cut, even her dry cleaning, results not only in the chauvinistic condescension of salesmen who respect only her husband's or father's purchasing power, but also in being consistently charged more than men for the same product or service. Furthermore, feminists perpetually allege that college women are failed in every way by their patriarchal learning institutions--citing date and stranger rape on campus, "phallocentric" curricula and gender-biased teaching methods. At a feminist conference at City University of New York in 1992, Steinem herself claimed that male-dominated schools were so bad, she was recommending an "underground system of education."

Then and today Steinem misses the point. Instead of enjoying a false sense of security, young women may be embracing conservatism for the proverbial reason that in the '90s they finally have something to conserve. Feminists hesitate to admit it and the media is reluctant to report it, but progress has and is being made in the fight for female equality. Gains in the fight for equality are not lost on the members of Generation X, who grew up in the Information Age. Founder of the MIT Media Lab and author of Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte admits a line of demarcation between informational "haves" and "have-nots." And in the arena of information access, the youth is occupying an advantaged position in relation to older generations.

Such data so readily available to young people today shows the situation for women is not as alarming as feminists would have us believe. According to a 1994 study performed by the National Women's Political Caucus, "women and men have won general elections at virtually identical rates over the last 20 years." The study concluded that the only reason we don't see more women in government is because they fail to run for election.

Historically, feminism has been on the vanguard of assuring that women will have the opportunity to compete in the workplace. The young people of Generation X, portrayed as a hesitant group of incessant questioners, have been interested to know: Have these efforts proved successful? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, women accounted for 60 percent of total labor force growth between 1982 and 1992. By 1983, women held 40 percent (9.7 million) of high paying managerial and professional specialty jobs and 47 percent (14.7 million) in 1992. In fact, women are projected to account for nearly three-fifths of the labor force entrants between 1990 and 2005 and will comprise 47 percent of the labor force by the year 2005.

According to the Science & Engineering 1993 Indicators, published by the National Science Board, the percentage of bachelors degrees earned in all fields by women was 45.43% in 1975, rising to 54.07% by 1991. The procurement of masters degrees achieved similar gains, from 44.79% in 1975 to 53.65% in 1991. Encouragingly, women have actually eclipsed men in their pursuit of an education. In all fields, men earned 508,424 bachelors degrees in 1975 while women earned only 423,239. As of 1991, however, women had far surpassed the male figure of 508,952 by earning a total of 599,045. In fact, women have earned more bachelors degrees than men since 1982. The numbers are similar for masters degrees: 156,895 for men in 1991, compared to 181,603 for women.

Although women are still under-represented in the fields of science and engineering, the gap is steadily narrowing. For example, while the number of men earning bachelors degrees in science and engineering actually fell from 210,741 in 1975 to 189,328 in 1991, women's degrees in science and engineering rose from 102,814 in 1975 to 148,347 in 1991. And in the field of computer science, men's bachelors degree production increased between 1975 and 1991 by a factor of only 4.38 as compared to the surge of women's degree production by a factor of 7.86. Such encouraging information may partly account for the waning response to feminist rallying cries among the ranks of Generation X.