What does feminism need to achieve, now, hear in the uk?

[bbq007]

Curious to hear ÿiur thoughts, as I feel we do have equal opportunities....

Well for starters, there's two women murdered every week at the hand of partners or ex partners or close family.

Equal opportunities while also told to spend all your time and money on grooming and looking good. It means young women and girls have it still stacked against them.

Equal opportunity doesn't translate to equal outcome. At my work there are loads of bright, intelligent, ambitious young women hired as part of graduate programs. Look up a few levels and they've mostly gone. It's suddenly mostly men. It will be a combination of things but it definitely isn't lack of capability.

"Invisible women" will give you a huge number of examples where women are still not even considered - health and safety, healthcare, town planning etc.

And of course, the latest where if certain people had their way, we wouldn't be a recognisable class of people anymore.

That's off the top of my head on a Sunday morning. I'm sure more knowledgeable women will be around to say it better.

What @HereForTheFreeLunch said!

Off the top of my head...

• More funding, research and support into women's health. Our stats for childbirth and postnatal support (especially breastfeeding) are shocking. Menopause is still not sufficiently understood and women's pain is often dismissed or minimised.
• Better enforcement and faster processing of sexual crimes, especially rape, where women are the main victim class. As it stands, I am more likely to win the lottery than see my rapist convicted.
• A new safeguarding law around porn, especially revenge porn and deep fake filters. In general, online hate (rape threats, death threats etc) gets directed at women and I'd like see the social platforms be compelled to do something about it.
• Better enforcement from the CSA for absent parents. Its not fair that one parent's career goes on to suffer from the childcare penalty and the other can walk away scot-free.
• Childcare in general needs to be seen as part of our infrastructure, instead of an optional extra. Ditto social care at the other end of the life scale.

Equal opportunities in law does not always mean equal on the ground, in every day life. We've a long way to go.

I suggest reading 'Invisible women' if you want to find out just how male-centric our world is.

An end to the prioritisation of gender over sex.

Well let's start with being allowed to say feminism is proudly and exclusively focused on the interests of biological females without people wincing, hurriedly reframing it to something nicer and more male-ego soothing, or starting on the abuse.

And then being allowed to name ourselves as adult human females without men and male-centred supporters getting highly snotty about how granting that implies a very naughty wish to limit men's absolute freedom to use women as resources and support services without needing their consent or having to be buggered with respecting them as equal human beings.

Once that's achieved I've got quite a long list. But those two are the dead giveaway really that up to this point the whole 'women have achieved equality' thing has been a performative veneer with very little actual reality beneath it.

Women legally have equal opportunities at work, but the cultural expectation is still that women will do the majority of unpaid care work. Which means that women are not in a position to prioritise their careers and earning potential, which is one of the reasons we have a gender pay gap, and more shockingly, a gender pension gap estimated at twice the size of the gender pay gap. Women do what is expected of them - they deprioritise paid work to look after their children (while their husband works full time), their grandchildren and their elderly parents and parents-in-law, and the pension they receive reflects the total lack of value that is placed on that work, whereas their menfolk have been busy "contributing to the economy" so they get more.

Others have said it already, but it's so important to understand, especially for young women who have been told they can do anything the boys can - equal opportunity is not the same as an equal outcome.

As others have said, start with reading Invisible Women. It's not a surprise you can't see it. It's a bit of a head fuck.

People talk about equity a lot these days rather than equality of opportunity.

I hate banging on about toilets but equality would be 3 mens loos and 3 females loos. We have the same number of opportunities to wee then.

But equity would give women bigger cubicles as they need to fit sanitary disposal within them, and trying to use some cubicles whilst pregnant was a joke.
There'd be more cubicles because it takes longer for women to wee and change sanitary procucts that just wee standing up.
Women are also more likely to need to wee due to being pregnant and suffering pelvic floor issues after birth.

This is before you get to womren more likely to have babies, buggies and children with them.

Theres lots of things like this where I have the same opportunity but noone considered womens needs when creating that opportunity.

Putting cycle lanes everywhere. I see very few women cycling. These are accommodations for men, and women are inconvenienced as it becomes harder to use buses or drive as a result.

I don’t care if women could cycle. They don’t and it’s just another example of men getting everything they want.

It needs to go back to focusing on actual women, and it needs to be truly intersectional.

Intersectional feminism, for those who don't quite understand the meaning of the term, means feminism which includes and advocates for women who are also at risk of being oppressed or discriminated against for another reason, besides being female.

For example, black women are on the intersection between being female (and vulnerable to sex based oppression and discrimination) and being black (and vulnerable to race based oppression and discrimination.

Disabled women are on the intersection between being female and being disabled (and vulnerable to oppression or discrimination due to their disability).

Lesbians are on the intersection between being female and being same sex attracted (and vulnerable to oppression or discrimination due to their sexuality).

Intersectional feminism should not include trans women because trans women are male and being male does not intersect with being female. It should include trans men because trans men are female and also vulnerable to oppression and discrimination due to their transgender status.

The term intersectional feminism is currently being used as a stick to beat gender critical women with and to argue that feminism should include male people at the expense of female people and at the particular expense of female people who are also vulnerable in other ways, i.e. the very women intersectional feminism is supposed to be about. The term needs to be reclaimed and its original meaning needs to be restored (along with many other words).

Some outstanding points here. I'd add that we are nowhere near equal pay.

I would also like to see more research funding going into women's health issues (painful periods and menopause anyone?). They impact half the human race but attract precious little funding.

Definitely need single sex spaces, single sex sport and a focus on sex rather than gender.

I would also like to see women judged on the same scale as men - for everything from your standard social situation all the way to women's prisons where you will find many non-violent victims of abuse because women can be imprisoned for not paying fines.

Don't think this thread is turning out the way the OP anticipated

Craniol
… or you could find ways to make cycling infrastructure more appropriate for women, as that would be good for their health and fitness, good for the environment, and would save them a lot of money.

I’m not convinced that making life harder for cyclists is good feminist thinking.

@craniol
Putting cycle lanes everywhere. I see very few women cycling. These are accommodations for men, and women are inconvenienced as it becomes harder to use buses or drive as a result.

This is interesting. I live somewhere with almost no hills and lots of people cycle, women and men. I’d never thought that more men than women cycle just to get around, and I don’t think they do here. I see many cargo bikes and some child bike seats to transport children about.

There are pro and anti cycling lobbies here, and I follow both on Facebook, and I’ve not seen this argument before.

I wonder what the difference is, between here and where you’re looking. Busier roads, longer distances, steeper hills?

IME the cycle lanes aren't joined up, which makes them unusable if you're not comfortable cycling on roads with the cars.

We need men to stop raping and killing us.

The treating of women as sexual objects for men's gratification remains rife in many ways: women and teenage girls getting harassed by men in the street, the prominence and normalisation of pornography, the rise of onlyFans, the legality of prostitution and of sex trade establishments like strip clubs and lap dancing. Women can't be equal if women are treated as objects for sale.

There are hate crime protections for every protected characteristics except women. Whatever you think about the concept of a hate crime or hate speech in general as a matter of law, the whole thing becomes absurd and ridiculous where something that's racist gets a special category of crime and not something that's sexist/misogynistic. This is then justified by saying 'oh, well, if we bothered about sexist abuse, it would overshadow everything else' like that's a reason for not doing anything about it at all (then why focus on what you admit is a smaller (less frequent) issue?) The abuse of women is played down.

My Xmas wishlist:

Address MVAWG.

Government funding for dv shelters and rape shelters

Fix the family courts, don't allow abusers to see their children

Address womens' health inequalities and issues

Address issues of race, culture and belief where these intersect with feminism

Recognition for the value of 'women's work:

Value placed on unpaid care work, which almost always falls to women

Value placed on 'housework' and childcare, which ditto

Clarify that 'women' are biological women only and men who wish to mimic women are not entitled to women's rights or spaces

Protection for women only groups and lesbian only spaces (yes, men are also entitled to men only spaces)

Address porn culture and the expectations that girls are put on earth to service men

Reinstate feminist/women's studies in academia in addition to the field that has been cannibalised by 'gender' studies.

One that many feminists may well disagree with: support for male mental health, more role models, more positive messaging

Address social media issues,

Get girls outdoors and exercising more, keep supporting women's football and other women's sports

I mean, I could go on.

Excellent description of intersectional feminism, Margot

@bbq007 Lots of good responses to your question, here. What are your thoughts? What do you think feminism should focus on? Or do you think that feminism has achieved its goals in the UK?

Yes, this.
I'd add that the porn culture has seeped into the perception of female beauty, false larger, more pert breasts, designer vaginas, injected large swollen lips. The injected lips are really disturbing, sending a primitive message to the porn addled brain about blow jobs and readiness for sex. The injected arse is similar. Body modifications for women to present as close to porny Barbie dolls is on the rise. Only fans, escorting etc etc also on the rise but this time presented (by the male owned/run industry) as an independent woman's sensible choice. All of this backed up by the surgically enhanced 'drag culture' where the women are given the true beauty standards, again controlled by men.