FEM 101: Not All Women Benefit from Feminism

I think the title is a bit misleading, but I'm glad to see a big, mainstream site like Jezebel  addressing feminism's problems of meeting the needs of all women, not just white, middle-and-upper-class ones; however, this is far from new information. Women are disproportionately poor, and feminism has always benefited already privileged women.

This is from bell hooks's book, Where We Stand: Class Matters, a full decade old. And even though she was talking about the early second-wave feminists of Friedan's era, it's as relevant today. And it's pretty disheartening:

It was not gender discrimination or sexist oppression that kept privileged women from working outside the home; it was the fact that work open to them would have been the same low-paid unskilled labor open to all women. This elite group of highly educated females stayed at the home rather than do the type of work large numbers of middle-income and working-class women were doing.

It's also disheartening to see so many commenters willing to defend feminism without looking at its history of exclusion.