Why feminism should focus less on culture.

• Author: Pollitt, Katha
• Position: Back to the Real World - Column

Remember all those trend stories about the death of feminism? These days, feminism is everywhere: online, in the bookstore, on the small screen. Beyonce is a feminist and so are Emma Watson and Taylor Swift, to say nothing of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Caitlin Moran, Lena Dunham, and Amy Schumer. Feminist issues make headlines: sexual assault on campus, domestic violence in the NFL, revenge porn, Gamergate, and, of course, the ongoing Republican war on women's reproductive rights.

Five years ago "rape culture" and "intersectionality" were barely comprehensible to anyone who hadn't majored in women's studies. Now they're familiar expressions.

For anyone who lived through the "I'm not a feminist but" decades when the typical op-ed by a woman was a plaintive sigh about picking up her husband's socks, today's outspokenness comes as a huge relief.

Full credit goes to the young activists who are taking up the torch, suing their universities for ignoring rape complaints, and founding new organizations. There are groups like Hollaback, which protests street harassment, and Vida, which monitors the number of women's bylines in magazines. There are a host of new abortion funds. Fund Texas Choice, which helps organize and pay for travel for Texans whose near-by abortion clinics have been closed by stringent state laws, was founded by Lenzi Sheible, a twenty-year-old student.

Young women are bringing new creativity and vitality to old causes. To demystify abortion, Emily Letts videoed her own procedure and put it on YouTube; to encourage women to consider getting the most effective contraceptive method, Alison Turkos tweeted her IUD insertion.

Far be it from me to knock any woman--or man--who is trying to make life better for women in any way. The new feminism is great, and the issues it concentrates on are crucial. (Well, maybe we didn't need quite so many posts about Miley Cyrus fellating a giant hammer or Jaime's rape of Cersei in last season's Game of Thrones.) Issues of sexual self-determination--whether it's the right to decide when and if to have a child or the right to wear what you want--have always been central to feminism.

But there's a fundamental piece that gets a lot less attention than it deserves: economic issues. Of course, I immediately have to qualify that, because reproductive rights, which get plenty of attention, are an economic issue. Controlling the timing and frequency of childbearing is basic to women's ability to get education...