FEMINISM is a little like the local dowager who people say was a great beauty in her day, though to the young she seems only a cranky old lady. Only about a quarter of women are willing to call themselves feminists these days, and those who do often squirm uncomfortably under the label. Twentyand thirty-somethings who were nurtured by “girl power” soccer parents, swim coaches, and math teachers to become successful career women are more concerned with finding time for the baby’s pediatrician appointment than with listening to the old lady’s history, which, to be honest, they find a little annoying in its self-regarding nostalgia.