Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing The Heidi Chronicles at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. The play follows the story of Heidi Holland as a teenager in high school in the 1960s to an adult in the late 1980s and her experiences as a woman in this time period. An art historian with a specific focus in women in art, Heidi’s discovery and acceptance of feminism and the role it plays in her life, particularly with her relationships, are the primary focus of the story. Personally, I found the play a refreshingly honest and often hilarious tale of second wave feminism, which has impacted us even to the present day.

To some, The Heidi Chronicles may have seemed dated and irrelevant now that we have seemingly achieved many of the equal rights goals of second wave feminism. However, I do not think that it is irrelevant in the slightest, seeing as women still face inequality in the present. In the play, one of the most memorable scenes was one where Heidi and two men she is close to, Scoop and Peter, are invited to speak on the talk show Hello, New York. Throughout the scene, Heidi is asked questions often pertaining directly to a her own experiences as a woman- and yet, Scoop and Peter are almost constantly interrupting and talking over her. By the end of the scene, Heidi has barely gotten a word in, while the two men sitting on either side of her are basking in the glory of having charmed the host, and likely the audience.

The scene I described above, to me, is indicative of the struggles women still face today. Even in a world where we are supposedly equal to men, women are still shoved to the sidelines. Every time a woman speaks up about feminist issues or women’s experiences, someone out there inevitably pipes up with: “what about men?” Women, when they try to discuss anything about overcoming gender inequality, are pushed to the side in an effort to keep the focus on men, whether it be overtly or subtly. An example of this in recent news was Emma Watson’s HeForShe campaign speech, where she calls upon men to aid women in the fight for gender equality. Watson made it a point to include men in her speech, to attempt to make her speech and her cause as truly equal as possible without undermining the reality of inequality of women and men. And yet, there has still been an incredible backlash from people, accompanied by a threat to leak nude photos of Watson in reaction to the speech (which turned out to be false, but still excellent social commentary) and an article from TIME magazine saying the HeForShe movement is essentially useless until it recognizes discrimination against men.

While Heidi’s specific struggle might seem dated, her general struggle is echoed in the ones that women face today; I like to think people know this, seeing as The Heidi Chronicles has been revived at the Guthrie and will be on Broadway early next year. Women still deal with discrimination in various aspects of society, and treating Heidi’s story as a “time capsule” (as one Star Tribune review put it) diminishes the struggles women continue to face in the present day. Heidi’s fight against inequality has, and will continue to, carry on.