THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN.

• Author: HYATT, RALPH
• Position: Review

THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN BY RUTH ROSEN VIKING PENGUIN 2000, 446 PAGES, $34.95

Although they are familiar with the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, it is my educated guess that today's high schoolers are less informed and hold a different view of the revolution known as "The Women's Movement" than do adults over 40. Feminism, after all, is not part of their academic requirements, and they have grown up observing women in all kinds of activities that once were strictly gender-related: television anchors, sportscasters, college presidents, professors and school administrators, wrestlers, boxers, senators, and prime ministers.

Typically, students are unable to identify Betty Friedan or her powerful 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, in which she wrote: "The time has come to confront, with concrete actions, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings."

One might justifiably inquire how many women in their 30s and 40s would know that the granting of suffrage to women in 1920, stemming from the leadership of Susan B. Anthony, was known as "The First Wave of Feminism"? Women activists at that time devoted their energies to all sorts of issues, such as child labor protection, prenatal care for mothers, and peace.

The World Split Open spreads out the historical ups and downs, victories, and failures of the women's movement. Rosen, the author and a former activist, seems quite at home with the multitude of facts. A professor of history with a flair for details, she reveals a sensitivity to the antecedents as well as the future thrust of relevant events. In a chapter called "The Politics of Paranoia," for example, she recalls when the leaders of the movement were those with the loudest voices and most time to spend at meetings. Activists were extremely jealous and competitive with other feminists. As Vivian Rothstein, one of the early founders of Chicago's Women's Liberation Union, reminisced, "Many of us were damaged people. How could we not have created...