Sylvia Walby - The Future of Feminism

The Future of Feminism

The Future of Feminism

Sylvia Walby

polity

Copyright Sylvia Walby 2011

The right of Sylvia Walby to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3742-6

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the many feminists whose activities meant that this book could be written. In particular, I thank those who have debated feminism with me, from the UK Womens Budget Group and End Violence Against Women campaign to the UNESCO gender experts.

The book took shape in the context of the EU Framework Programme, Quing a context of analysing the quality of gender equality policies across the EU. I thank all Quingers for their contributions to my thinking.

I would like to thank the many people with whom I have discussed these ideas at various stages of their development, including Ulla Bjrnberg, Myra Marx Ferree, Anita Gransson, Heidi Gottfried, Karin Gottschall, Sue Himmelweit, Agnes Hubert, Liz Kelly, Andrea Krizsn, Ema Lombardo, Barbara Risman, Andrew Sayer, Karen Shire, Clare Short, Sofia Strid, Myria Vassiliadou, Janet Veitch and Linda Woodhead. I would especially like to thank Jo Armstrong, Sue Penna, John Urry and Mieke Verloo for their helpful detailed comments on the whole manuscript.

Finally I would like to thank the Polity team, especially Jonathan Skerrett and the copy-editor, Manuela Tecusan.

Introduction

Feminism is not dead. This is not a postfeminist era. Feminism is still vibrant, despite declarations that it is over. Feminism is a success, although many gender inequalities remain. Feminism is taking powerful new forms, which make it unrecognisable to some.

Feminism faces new challenges in new times. As a result of success, feminism now engages with power and with government; yet mainstreaming gender equality into governmental policy produces tensions for feminism. As a result of successful mobilisation, feminist projects intersect with others, creating dilemmas over priorities. The development of neoliberalism, together with increased economic inequalities, de-democratisation, and an environmental crisis, creates the biggest challenge for feminism.

The future of feminism depends on responses to these challenges. There are alternative strategies to address such challenges with implications for feminism, gender relations and the wider society.

Why Is It Said That Feminism Is Dead?

There have been many attempts to declare that feminism is over; that we are living in the aftermath of feminism (McRobbie 2008); that this is now a postfeminist era (Tasker and Negra 2007); that feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism (Bumiller 2008; Eisenstein 2009; Fraser 2009); or that feminism is in abeyance, surviving minimally in a hostile climate (Taylor 1989; Bagguley 2002; Grey and Sawer 2008).

Many reasons have been proposed as to why feminism should have ended. On one account, feminism would have been defeated by a hostile backlash that opposes, caricatures, misrepresents and ridicules it (Faludi 1991, 1992). On another, feminism would have faded away, becoming irrelevant in a new, post-patriarchal era, since it would have met its goals, so there would no longer be any need for it. Feminism would have been replaced by new gender projects, by girl power and the new raunch culture (McRobbie 2008) and these alternative gender projects are labelled postfeminist (Tasker and Negra 2007). The explanations for the purported demise of feminism range from hostile backlash to its incorporation into postfeminist or neoliberal projects.

Feminism Is Alive and Vibrant

But feminism is not dead; rather it is alive and vibrant. Today a very wide range of activities designed to reduce gender inequality exists. Projects for gender equality extend across the domains of economy, polity and violence, as well as across civil society. They are highly varied, depending on social location. Feminism is local, national, European and international, and influenced by the global horizon.

Feminism is, however, less visible than before. This is partly because projects to reduce gender inequality less often label themselves as feminist, and partly because the form that feminism takes has been changing beyond recognition. Projects for gender equality are less likely to call themselves feminist when they exist in alliance or coalition with other social forces; they adopt instead a more generic terminology concerning equality, justice and rights. There is also pressure not to use a term that has been criticised, even stigmatised. New forms of feminism have emerged that no longer take the form of a traditional social movement, being institutionalised instead in civil society and in the state. These new institutionalised forms are less recognisable as feminist by those who are accustomed to thinking of feminism as merely visible protest.

What Is Feminism?

There are different ways of approaching a definition of feminism. These include the self-definition of individuals, groups or projects as feminist; treating reducing gender inequality as equivalent to feminist; and treating promoting the interests of women as equivalent to feminist.

Self-definition is perhaps the most common approach. A person or project is feminist if they say they are feminist. This approach is consistent with the traditions of the early second wave womens movement in that it is based on a persons own experience. However, there are some difficulties here. The term feminist is contentious indeed even stigmatised. Feminism is a signifier of something very particular and comes with additional meanings attached, which many seek to avoid. It has acquired connotations of separatism, extremism, men-avoiding lesbianism. This narrowing of the term is partly a product of a hostile opposition, in which feminism is caricatured and ridiculed in segments of the media. The phenomenon is hardly new (bra-burning has long been used as an adjective linked to feminism in this way).

This stigmatising of the term feminism had its effects. It has led to the development of the phenomenon of the person who states Im not a feminist but..., where the but is followed by an endorsement of goals that are usually thought of as feminist, such as equal pay for equal work and the elimination of male violence against women. As a consequence, other terminology has developed that can be used to signify feminist without resorting to the f word (Redfern and Aune 2010), such as gender equality, equality, equal opportunities and diversity. There is a further issue concerning the positioning of anti-sexist men in relation to feminism. Even if such men support, and contribute to, feminist goals and projects, there is a question as to whether or not they can be described as feminist on the conventional approach, since men do not usually experience inequality as a result of their gender.