Young women and feminism

A key challenge for the feminist and women?s movement is to find ways to engage, include and retain young women from diverse backgrounds in working for social change and justice. Unfortunately, the homogenisation of young women into categories determined by age, inexperience and status as ?new comers? to the women?s movement has sometimes worked to exclude the important contribution that they can make.

A key challenge for the feminist and women’s movement is to find ways to engage, include and retain young women from diverse backgrounds in working for social change and justice. Unfortunately, the homogenisation of young women into categories determined by age, inexperience and status as ‘new comers’ to the women’s movement has sometimes worked to exclude the important contribution that they can make.

While it is true that young women are currently benefiting from the gains of previous generations of feminist struggles, it is also true that the world they encounter is riddled with a complex web of challenges. These include militarisaion, wars, neoliberalism, fundamentalisms, HIV/AIDS and others. In this new global order feminism provides a critical framework in which to analyse and develop visions for a just world. Feminists and women’s movements provide the vehicle with which to make real these visions.

However young women are by no means homogenous and their relationship to feminism and feminist movements is diverse. My work has allowed me to interact with diverse groups of young women each of whom have an important contribution to make.

First, there is a group of young women who avoid overt identification with the movement, who hold the movement at ‘arms length’. These young women are engaged in addressing different forms of oppressions; human rights abuses, racism, hetero-sexism or poverty. Striving for social justice is at the centre of their analysis. However, many of them feel isolated and excluded from the movement. They feel that the movement is not doing enough to challenge power and multiple-oppressions. They feel that the movement is insular and is not doing enough to work across movements, including working with men. In addition, they feel that the feminist movements have become too professional and that there is very little space for radical activism; which is what they believe is needed to really challenge power relations.

The second group of young women avoids identification with the term feminist, for varying reasons. Some because of misconceptions about the meanings of feminism and the movement; while for others openly identifying with the movement makes them vulnerable in their local contexts to ‘anti-feminist backlash’. In an email discussion in 2003, young women noted that: “In an era of increased militirisation and fundamentalisms, where women are often relegated to traditionally oppressed roles, it is of the utmost importance to have an awareness of the consequences for young women of identifying as feminists.” In broader discussions with other young women, living in contexts where it is ‘easier’ to come out as feminists, these young women are often criticised as not being willing to go the extra mile to really live their activism.

The third group is the ‘professional’ feminist: those who enter and network with the movement through women’s and gender studies programmes at their universities. Through their research they start engaging with issues of social justice and then eventually find employment in the field. However, a colleague from Peru last year pointed out that although it is important for young women to have a historical, analytical and theoretical framework, it is as important for these young women to find local spaces for their activism that does not involve (paid) ‘work’.

The last group of young women is what I would like to call the ‘new generation feminists’. I have been fortunate to be part of a group of ‘new generation feminists’; a group of young women who are very passionate about feminism and the movement as they see it as the key to achieving social justice. Many of them are engaged in local struggles but also engaged in critical analyses on the issues affecting women and young women in particular. These young women actively seek and create spaces to learn from previous generations of feminists; to engage across generations and to critically reflect on strategies and on their own feminism. They are keen to bring in new analyses and ways of looking at power relations; different strategies and ways of organising into the movement. Although this group may be critical and reflective about the movement, its dynamics and relations within, they do so without disengaging or throwing up their hands in despair. Many of these young women are working in contexts where organising is very complex, engaging with a range of power relations; and therefore understand the need to push through the tensions to get to the desired outcome.

I have also experienced the ‘sisterhood’ among a diverse group of young women in this group – a sisterhood that translated into a due regard for process that is inclusive of all the voices present – something that I have found lacking in many other contexts.

Young women are engaged in various forms of activism. As the generation who will take the struggles and gains made forward, it is critical that they are brought into and participate in feminist and women’s movements as it is they who will make the vision of a just and equal society a reality.

Shamillah Wilson manages the Young Women and Leadership Programme at the Association for Womens Rights in Development (AWID)

This article is part of the GEM Opinion and Commentary Service that provides views and perspectives on current events.

janine@genderlinks.org.za for more information.