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Crossley, Alison Dahl. Finding Feminism: Millennials and the Unfinished Gender Revolution. New York: New York University Press, 2017, 256 pp. (9781479884094)
Upon beginning Finding Feminism: Millennials and the Unfinished Gender Revolution, it is easy to wish that Alison Dahl Crossley's researchfollowed the surge of feminist activism stemming from the 2016 US Presidential election. Further engagement with the text, however, reveals that it is a surprisingly prescient exploration of how feminists of the early 2010's sustained feminist community in such a way to maximize on the recent surge of interest in, and support for, gender equality. Her portrait of young feminists at three college campuses in 2011 thus provides useful background and context for understanding the current interest in the "unfinished gender revolution."
In 2011, Crossley interviewed seventy-five undergraduate students at three institutions - the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and Smith College. She also surveyed 1,397 students on these campuses and observed feminist student groups. The book presents her conclusions about students' willingness to claim a feminist identity and the ways that students engage in feminist activism. Crossley finds little support for common perceptions about young feminists - namely, that they are unwilling to claim a feminist identity, are unaware of continuing inequalities, and unappreciative or unaware of the contributions of earlier generations of feminists. Instead, her research reveals "how college campuses are generative environments for feminism, and valuable sites for the perpetuation of the movement" (148). While Crossley does find that delineating the line...