I believe the author chooses to begin by citing the positive effects of feminism, in order to offset the actual set backs that occurred in reaction to the positives.
At last, after a long silence, women took to the streets. In the two
decades of radical action that followed the rebirth of feminism in the
early 1970s, Western women gained legal and reproductive rights,
pursued higher education, entered the trades and the professions, and
overturned ancient and revered beliefs about their social role. A generation on, do women feel free?