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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism is over... according to women

42 replies

enimmead · 18/10/2012 10:37

www.express.co.uk/posts/view/352751/Feminism-is-over-say-women

Apparently feminism is too aggressive towards men and many women feel they've achieved equality over pay and skills. A quote from NetMums founder;

"Netmums founder Siobhan Freegard said: ?Modern women feel traditional feminism is no longer working for them as it?s aggressive, divisive and doesn?t take into account their personal circumstances."

OP posts:
DioneTheDiabolist · 18/10/2012 10:40

I think she's confusing traditional feminism for radical feminism.

PretzelTime · 18/10/2012 10:46

"Modern women feel..." - what load of crap. Like we all think the same. And it erases the women who actually are feminists.

GetAllTheThings · 18/10/2012 10:46

The Sun has the same story under the header

'Girls say feminism has lost the point'

I thought maybe they'd profiled a school.

rosabud · 18/10/2012 11:26

Amazing how quick the media is to report fairly prominent women who peddle this nonsense yet we don't see equal headlines reporting the opposite (and more commonly accepted) viewpoint. Imagine the headline "Women still doing a lot of househld chores and not earning as much as men and a bit cross about it." But then news is about things/ opinions that are unusual, that's what makes it news.

slug · 18/10/2012 11:41

Of course we're now all equal now that ther's no gender pay gap and rape and domestic violence have been solved. Hmm

baddancingdad · 18/10/2012 11:50

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9614864/Just-one-in-seven-women-describes-themselves-as-feminist.html#

The women that answered the questions in the survey might take offence at being told their thoughts were crap and nonsense.

At least, it suggests that feminism has an image problem amongst this particular demographic. At worst, it suggests a successful propaganda campaign such that this demographic do not understand the dynamics of the world around them. Either way, it seems a strange reaction to dismiss it...

WomanlyWoman · 18/10/2012 11:56

It's actually really weirdly reported. One in three say radical feminism is too aggressive, what's bad about that? What did the other two thirds say? If you look through it there are really pointed questions, like 'If you DON'T call yourself a feminist, why is that? and then asking 'what are the downsides of feminism?'. No wonder the results were skewed toward the negative. It's an absolute disgrace actually, and, reading between the lines, it shows that feminism is really healthy.

MMMarmite · 18/10/2012 12:35

Does anyone have a link to the original survey? Without knowing how the participants were selected and how the questions were phrased, it's impossible to tell whether the results are meaningful.

baddancingdad · 18/10/2012 12:51

[http://www.netmums.com/home/feminism]

PretzelTime · 18/10/2012 13:37

It really IS a load of crap to write that "the modern woman" (=ALL OF US) are anti-feminism. It's blatantly false as well as sexist. The backlash continues.

MMMarmite · 18/10/2012 14:42

Thanks bdd.

So it seems it was a survey of the netmums users who chose to reply - not a very good sampling technique, but at least tells us what these 1300 women think. It seems like it may have been multiple choice, which can lead to bias if some responses aren't included, or if questions are phrased in a leading manner. The results are presented in an irritating way that makes it hard to tell whether all the questions and responses have been included in the write-up.

Only 14% of the women described themselves as a feminist. This is worrying for feminism obviously, but it's important to know why - for example some black women identify as womanist rather than feminist because of racism within the feminist movement. This option is not discussed in the follow-up question, nor is "I don't like political labels", and various other possible reasons.

I find the "why not" question difficult to interpret, because all of the percentage agreements are less than 50%. I'm surmising that respondants were supposed to "tick all the answers that you agree with" rather than "pick the one you most agree with", because the the total adds up to more than 100%. Hence, if 28% thought traditional radical feminism was too aggressive, then do 72% of the women think it's not too aggressive? Well that's pretty impressive - IMO radical feminism is a little aggressive Wink. So anyway, a few find feminism old fashioned, a some find the most radical part of feminism to be two aggressive, and a few find it "not a positive label for women" (what does that mean? Too vague to be informative.) The main answer is very unclear: "39% criticised old-fashioned feminism ( hang-on: so not all of feminism... which bits count as old-fashioned feminism? ) for being too divisive, claiming they 'don't want to be equal- women are different to men and we should celebrate the differences'" So did the 39% say it was divisive, or did 39% say they don't want to be equal - because the two criticisms mean totally different things!

Going back to the first question, 25% of women aged 45 to 50 identified as feminist, but only 8% of women aged 20 to 24. Later on, we learn that "over half of mums with teenage daughters said that their child was not aware of the feminist movement." So if they don't know what the feminist movement is, they're hardly likely to identify as a feminist when they reach the age of 20. Yet oddly, "I don't know much about what the feminist movement stands for" wasn't included as an option for reasons not too identify as a feminist.

In short, the survey is too poorly constructed to be informative.

WomanlyWoman · 18/10/2012 15:46

Well put MMMarmite. What's aggravating about it is the way the press have jumped on it as a chance to denigrate feminists. The Fail have their usual 'stiletto on a man's head' photo and an angry looking pic of Germaine Greer. The results could be interpreted very differently, it just seems like it set out to be anti-feminist in the first place and the glee with which some of the media have jumped on it is scary. I actually think feminism is thriving, the 'old fashioned media' are scared.

amillionyears · 18/10/2012 15:57

Are netmums generally younger than Mumsnetters does anyone know?

grimbletart · 18/10/2012 16:37

MMMarmite: you are so right. Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of statistics and how to conduct surveys could drive a coach and horses through this.

But, like many "popular" surveys this is not a real attempt to establish what the female population thinks about feminism. It's a tool to get publicity.

A "survey" is a quick and dirty method of hitting the headlines as any junior PR account exec. would know.

Scientifically, it tells us the square of bugger all.

grimbletart · 18/10/2012 16:38

square root

HoneyDragon · 18/10/2012 16:45

I did the survey, it was carefully crafted to make feminists look like a bunch of out dated dungaree wearing bastards who weren't grateful for the existing quality.

It mainly focused around wearing make up, and going to get your hair done.

You choice of feminist role models included:-

Coleen Rooney, Katie Price, Muthamma and Michelle Obama, iirc.

It really was a pile of wank and I told them so.

HoneyDragon · 18/10/2012 16:46

Oh and they took upon themselves to explain who Michelle Obama and Muthamma were Hmm

MMMarmite · 18/10/2012 16:48

That's interesting HoneyDragon.

What do you think is the motivation behind it? Is it just an easy way to get publicity, or is there more to it? Why do netmums want to rubbish feminism?

MiniTheMinx · 18/10/2012 17:00

'don't want to be equal- women are different to men and we should celebrate the differences'

Celebrating differences doesn't have to preclude equality. How very strange, seems to me to be a little bit of propaganda. I went over to the dark other side and had a read. Apparently women now want to elevate cup cake baking to some great human endevor. I knew there was going to be trouble when I saw all those pale blue mixing machines and spotty aprons in Debenhams.

With the economic crisis and the rise in part time working expect to find child care experts wheeled out next to tell working mother's they are the work of the devil. It had to happen eventually because fewer women/ fewer people are needed to work in the declining west.

HoneyDragon · 18/10/2012 17:01

I certainly think the survey was to rubbish feminism rather than endorse it. It perpertated a lot of stereotypes and asked you to pick which one you identified with. The articles from it certainly aren't going "good lord, this is terrible, women don't identify with feminism!" are they?

I selected the other box and put Justine Roberts as my feminist role model for providing Mumsnet, a feminist friendly PARENTING site and her support of the We Believe You campaign. Wink

Frans1980 · 18/10/2012 17:19

Why is it newspapers can get away with misogyny and promoting gender inequality yet they would never get away with posting racism?

Why is racism taken seriously but misogyny isn't??

FrothyDragon · 18/10/2012 18:05

Frans, you seem to think women are human, and therefore deserving of being treated as such...

Easy mistake... Grin

Seriously, though. I would LOVE to see sexism in media taken as seriously as racism. :( I mean, this is 2012, for Sapphos' sake.

StewieGriffinsMom · 18/10/2012 18:12

This reply has been deleted

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kim147 · 18/10/2012 18:17

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TheDoctrineOfSnatch · 19/10/2012 06:56

Nice one Honeydragon.

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