Women's week ruminations

Date: 7:52am, 11 Mar 2010

Has women's lot improved as a result of feminism? I read an article this week which questioned whether it had improved at all except for for a few of the top professionals. I think this is rather pessimistic. It is undeniable that more and more women are leaving school with better qualifications and are in the workforce in much greater numbers. It is not just a clutch of women who are doing well. There are definitely more women around in the senior positions, if not in the most senior positions, but this percolates down. Whereas in the past women in senior positions may have tried to ape male behaviour, there is now a sufficient critical mass to start changing things. There are more policies aimed at encouraging women from the grassroots up. There is more flexible working and more and more men are also opting for this so it is less of a career siding than it once was. There is more support for getting women back into the workplace through tax credits and other incentives.

Undeniably, childcare has become more expensive; life in general has become more expensive. More people are in debt and more families need two incomes to get by. Many women are struggling to cope as single parents with little input from their ex-partners. Are they better off or worse off than if they had stayed with their partner as undoubtedly would have occurred in the past? It's a hard call.

Feminism has also shed more of a light on areas like domestic violence and rape. It is not the failure of feminism that is to blame for still high levels of such violence and low levels of prosecution. The struggle against violence was always going to be a hard and long one.

What happened was that feminism somehow came to a pause when it was still in its youth. Its political side became associated with extremism and a sense of humour failure. The personal stuff - sex, basically - got more emphasis. Sex and the City was suddenly what feminism was about - sex, shopping, dressing up, Girl Power. Grown women aspired to look like dolls and even act like them. They convinced themselves and were repeatedly told that they were doing it for themselves and not to please anyone else, as if that made placing looks above any other quality somehow a good thing and something to do with "empowerment".

I just don't buy the ultra-pessimism that says things have only got worse. True, there is a huge divide between the aspirations of women based on class. Natasha Walter's book talks about girls aspiring to be glamour models. This could not be further away from the young students I see regularly who are aiming to set up NGOs, go into medicine, travel the world. Undoubtedly, the gap between rich and poor has widened. Is that feminism's fault? Has feminism thrown us off the scent or is it that the world is complex and floating in a sea of many different currents?

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Related tags: Feminism