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We are in the midst of a sexual revolution at work. Thanks in part to the recession, women now hold close to half of all jobs in the economy, mothers are the main or co-breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, and men can claim the dubious honor of being a majority of the jobless.

But this is one sexual revolution that hasn't produced much joy of late - at work or at home. The American workplace is transforming, but women's lives aren't necessarily improving. If we'd known what it was like to have it all, as Lily Tomlin might say, we would have asked for something else.

The next women's movement should look a lot more like the one in the 1930s than the one in the late 1960s. Back in those dark days before "women's liberation," our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers had some brilliant ideas about how to improve the lives of working women as well as how to fix the economy. They were what I call New Deal feminists, who led the women's movement during the "long New Deal" from the 1930s to the 1960s.

They survived the Great Depression, kept factories humming during the war years and pioneered the now-commonplace status of working wife and mother. They knew first-hand about job loss, careers on hold and the competing demands of family and workplace, all problems we still face.

Their solutions were partial, but the policies they put forward concerning fair wages and family-friendly laws and workplaces -- all crucial elements in addressing our current economic insecurity and inequality -- are a foundation upon which we can build.

What did they achieve? Well, not exactly what they wanted, but then neither does any generation. What they wanted was not just more jobs but better jobs; not just the right to work but rights at work; not just equal pay but the revaluing of women's work, paid and unpaid, wherever it occurred -- in the family, in the community, on the factory floor, in the boardroom, at the day-care center or the nursing home; and Social Security and health care not just for some but for all.

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