President Obama speaks out on feminism’s achievements and ongoing challenges

August 15, 2016

As the father of two daughters, President Obama is keenly aware of the importance of feminism, both now and in the future—and not only for women. “The good news is that everywhere I go across the country, and around the world, I see people pushing back against dated assumptions about gender roles,” he wrote in Glamour magazine recently. He says he’s glad to see that the younger generation rejects restrictive ideas about gender and that young people today are “helping all of us understand that forcing people to adhere to outmoded, rigid notions of identity isn’t good for anybody—men, women, gay, straight, transgender or otherwise. These stereotypes limit our ability to simply be ourselves.”

Read President Barack Obama’s essay, “This is what a feminist looks like,” on the Glamour website.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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