Why aren't women feminists? Surely no-one thinks all the battles have been won?

[WideWebWitch]

OK, so I don't have any proper evidence to back this up (so don't post I hear you say, oh well, I bet there is some, so I will!) but I gather that increasingly young women aren't feminists and don't believe there's any need for a feminist movement of any kind. They think all the battles have been won. I know for sure they haven't but WHY do they think this? And why would anyone NOT be a feminist? If you're not, why not? I know this conversation has been had before on mn but I'm still interested.

I agree with Janice Turner about New Woman mag rebranding itself because young women don't like the word 'woman' fgs, this is an example of the sort of thing I mean.

no, don't think so. He's been around for ages now - think the first on record rape they have for him was in the early 90s.

eldery...ggrr elderly I meant

It's partly because one of the variables is plain opportunism too, but unfortunatley, stats show when rapists do have a choice they choose women of childbearing age. Gay rapists will choose men, paedofiles will choose children (I don;t know if there is a name for men who victimise older women)

gerontophiles, Monkeytrousers.

Really Aloha? Well thank you. And they say MN isn't educational!

Fennel and CharlieQ: Another feminist academic here. Just came back from another conference where papers on women attracted very small audiences and the issues raised were pushed to the side of the conference. Should post in the IT thread, I suppose, it was a confernénce about computer-mediated communication. I think the discussion about gendered communication and IT is fascinating

Conference. Conference.

Helloo! (Is it becasue I is an evolutionist?)

MT you are being left out of the feminist academic clique already . for having the Wrong Sort of feminist approach.

MT - sorry. Wasn't trying to ignore you. It just took ages for me to write my (badly written) post. Am trying to get some research done, so make myself analyse one website, then am allowed on Mumsnet for ten minutes, then back to analyse another website, etc.

Right, really, like the OP asks; why aren't women feminists?

What if it is because feminist discourse has become too entrenched in ideology which is irrelevant, impenetrable and meaningless for most women today?

The world and women are moving on while feminism refuses to go with them. If feminism is to become relevant to a new generation of women and continue to help women here and around the world. It, like any other discipline, has to be open to new intellectual and scientific developments, these are occurring in evolutionary theory. One thing is for sure, the world and the women upon it will continue to move ahead, feminism must itself evolve if it is to keep step with them and remain relevant.

It will mean a fair bit of backtracking; but if that's what people are loath to do then it begs the question of what feminism is for; women or academics?

Thanks for replying Libra,, I got a bit twichy there. It is hard to get other feminists to engage with this question though. Many seem to be happier to accept that feminism is defunct rather than accept new intellectual avenues.

I wonder whether it takes a little experience of the world before you realise that there is still a need for feminism? I will admit that it wasn't until it was out in the world after university, working and then juggling children and work, that I realised that there was still so much to still fight for.
I'm another that is shocked when my female students tell me that they aren't feminists, but maybe it is simply that they haven't got to the point in their lives where they see the need for it?

The thousand yard stare at uni went to two thousand yards with my mention of both a baby and evolution!

This is a very interesting thread but pedant that I am I feel obliged to point out that I worked on the research for New Woman and the results have not been presented properly in the OP's link.

Young women didn't like the name New Woman because they associated the word Woman in the magazine market with Woman's Own and Wommen's weekly which are magazines that are established and well know but are aimed at older women.

For young women who hadn't read it or didn't know the magazine, the name New Woman just made them feel like it was a magazine aimed at older women and therefore had negative associations in that it didn't seem aimed at them . The negative association from the word Woman came from the use of the word in titles for older women and had a slightly fuddy duddy feel. It wasn't a reaction to the word Woman per se but more the connotations that word had collected in the many years of it being associated with a rather old-fashioned magazine.

The change in name was primarily to try and remove a barrier to young women trying New woman.

I don't rememeber anything about the word Women being associated particularly with feminism (and I attended almost all of the groups)

However in spite of that I do do a lot of market research into young women and their opinions and I'm afraid that feminism is really starting to be regarded as very negative and I am regularly quite depressed by the number of bright young women who state that their aim in life it to get famous or to marry someone rich.

Feminism has lost the battle in the media - like Cali said, it is drawn on collective lines and the market (which directs the media and has all media resourses behind it) is on an individualist bent.

MT I would love a debate on Darwinian feminism (perhaps on another thread).

I agree academic feminism can get very bogged down in arcane debates but that's a result of academia more than feminism, perhaps. you progress your career (or hold onto your job) by inventing new debates much more than by marching to reclaim the streets.

There is a movement amongst some of my (male) colleagues to get me to change the title of my module (women and the media) to gender and the media. To make it more equal and because 'there is nothing to say on that subject any more'

Am trying Fennel - some still believe Darwin was a Nazi, which makes my job very hard

Exactly Libra.

this was an interesting essay I used in my undergraduate dissertation

new thread for discussion on evolutionary feminism

I just wanted to pick up on this point by Morningpaper:

"I was pondering on this this morning while at playgroup (instead of banging head against wall and crying as per usual) - actually I was reading some naked-girl tabloid over the shoulder of one of the dads - and I thought it's as though "girl power" is basically about the right to have as much sex as possible

How did men manage to convince women that having as much sex as possible meant they were liberated? Nice one"

Im not sure I agree with this assertion. I think that there are some young women out there that misguidedly believe that being promiscuous is a way of acheiving some equality in the gender stakes. I think its misguided to think that all women who feel they are entitled to as much sex as possible have had the wool pulled over their eyes! Some women actually do enjoy sex. You dont have to be a feminist to enjoy it, or not, as the case may be.

True VVV.

But I think we've gone from being told that we're wierd and dysfunctional if we enjoy it and therefore need to be committed to a lunatic asylum and in extreme cases have cliteredectomies to heal us of this dysfunction, to being told that we're wierd and dysfunctional if we don't enjoy it and had better have a half a bottle of vodka/ strong dose of viagara to heal of us of this dysfunction...