Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1998
Modern feminism has been preoccupied with difference. An early and continuing struggle has been to acknowledge differences between men and women without having those differences used against women. That struggle has been extended to recognizing differences among women. By the end of the 1980s, women were calling for a “politics of difference” in which “redefining our differences, learning from them, becomes the central task.” Although cautioning words were raised by some, feminists in general moved to trying not only to recognize but to celebrate difference.