Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change

Leading the Way is a collection of personal essays written by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership, and efforts to change the world. It responds to critical portrayals of this generation of "twenty-somethings" as being disengaged and apathetic about politics, social problems, and civic causes.

Bringing together graduates of a women's leadership certificate program at Rutgers University's Institute for Women's Leadership, these essays provide a contrasting picture to assumptions about the current death of feminism, the rise of selfishness and individualism, and the disaffected Millennium Generation. Reflecting on a critical juncture in their lives, the years during college and the beginning of careers or graduate studies, the contributors' voices demonstrate the ways that diverse, young, educated women in the United States are embodying and formulating new models of leadership, at the same time as they are finding their own professional paths, ways of being, and places in the world. They reflect on controversial issues such as gay marriage, gender, racial profiling, war, immigration, poverty, urban education, and health care reform in a post-9/11 era.

Leading the Way introduces readers to young women who are being prepared and empowered to assume leadership roles with men in all public arenas, and to accept equal responsibility for making positive social change in the twenty-first century.