Repudiating Feminism

Young Women in a Neoliberal World

Christina Scharff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317065791
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Gender equality is a widely shared value in many western societies and yet, the mention of the term feminism frequently provokes unease, bewilderment or overt hostility. Repudiating Feminism sheds light on why this is the case. Grounded in rich empirical research and providing a timely contribution to debates on engagements with feminism, Repudiating Feminism explores how young German and British women think, talk and feel about feminism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with women from different racial and class backgrounds, and with different sexual orientations, Repudiating Feminism reveals how young women's diverse positionings intersect with their views of feminism. This critical and reflexive analysis of the interplay between subjective accounts and broader cultural configurations shows how postfeminism, neoliberalism and heteronormativity mediate young women's negotiations of feminism, revealing the manner in which heterosexual norms structure engagements with feminism and its consequent association with man-hating and lesbian women. Speaking to a range of contemporary cultural trends, including the construction of essentialist notions of cultural difference and the neoliberal imperative to take responsibility for the management of one's own life, this book will be of interest to anyone studying sociology, gender and cultural studies.

Chapter 1 Young Women and Feminism

DOI: 10.4324/9781315605517-2

It has been widely documented that feminism is unpopular amongst young women (Jowett, 2004; Karsch, 2004; McRobbie, 2009; Reiss, 2004; Rich, 2005; Rúdólfsdóttir and Jolliffe, 2008; Stöcker, 2007). According to Sinikka Appola, Marnina Gonick and Anita Harris (2005: 195), “it is commonly accepted that young women are not especially interested in feminism as a label or a movement any more”. A survey conducted in 2006 showed that 71% of British women distance themselves from feminism (Womankind, 2006) and interviews in Britain and Germany demonstrate young women’s (dis-)investment in feminism (Jowett, 2004; see also Rich, 2005; Rúdólfsdóttir and Jolliffe, 2008; Reiss, 2004; Woodward and Woodward, 2009). According to Angela McRobbie, young women’s relationship with feminism has changed. While characterised by a politically productive dis-identification with feminism¹ in the early 1990s, young women’s attitudes towards feminism “have consolidated into something closer to repudiation rather than ambivalence” (McRobbie, 2004 b: 257). Feminist dis-identification constitutes the contested and fraught territory of young women’s attitudes towards feminism.

1 Following Butler, McRobbie saw young women’s critical engagement with feminism in the 1990s as signifying a hopeful dis-identification. In reflecting upon the political promises of dis-identification, Butler (1993: 219) states that “it may be that the affirmation of that slippage, that failure of identification is itself the point of departure for a more democratizing affirmation of internal difference”.

Feminist researchers have provided various reasons to explain why many young women reject feminism. Some argue that generational differences discourage young women from identifying as feminist (Gerhard, 1999; Landweer, 1993; Pilcher, 1998). McRobbie (2004 a, b; 2009) and Rosalind Gill (2007 a) have developed further the concept of postfeminism to designate a cultural era where feminism is taken into account but also forcefully repudiated. Feminist academics² and journalists also highlight negative media representations and stereotypes of feminism to argue that such hostile discourses render the movement unpopular amongst the young (Bail, 1996; Bulbeck, 1997; Kailer and Bierbaum, 2002; Kramer, 1998; Karsch, 2004; Johnson, 2002; Rottmann, 1998; Schulz, 2010). Numerous researchers suggest that young women regard gender equality as having been achieved, distancing themselves from feminism as anachronistic (Budgeon, 2001; Jowett, 2004; Moeller, 2002; Read, 2000; Rottmann, 1998; Sharpe, 2001; Titus, 2000). Equally drawing attention to current socio-cultural trends, research shows that neoliberal discourses and processes of individualisation promote individual achievement and dissolve the appeal of joining collective political struggles (Baker, 2008; Hughes, 2005; McRobbie, 2009; Misra, 1997; Rich, 2005; Trioli, 1996; Weingarten and Wellershoff, 1999). Lastly, but importantly, various researchers demonstrate that race and class intersect with feminist dis-identification and that many young women regard feminism as exclusionary (Aapola et al., 2005; Aronson, 2003; Denner, 2001; Kelly, 2001; McIntyre, 2001; Skeggs, 1997 a; Stuart, 1990).

2 Unless otherwise stated, the German texts that I draw on are academic articles and books. The authors have different disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from philosophy (i.e. Landweer), education (i.e. Reiss), to sociology (i.e. Hark, Lenz, Gerhard) and social psychology (i.e. Knapp).

This chapter will introduce and contextualise my study in various ways: I will discuss existing research on young women’s engagements with feminism; present my theoretical and methodological framework; and highlight key features of the British and German socio-historical contexts. In the first section, I will interweave a discussion of existing research on feminist dis-identification with brief summaries of my findings. The second and third sections will introduce a performative approach which seeks to trace how gender, sexuality, race and class intersect with feminist dis-identification. Section four will draw attention to the increased visibility of young women’s feminist activism in both Germany and Britain in the late 2000s and provide my rationale for focusing on repudiations of feminism. Finally, the last section will introduce the main features of the methods underpinning my study.

Explaining young women's rejection of feminism

Generational metaphors are frequently used in discussions about young women’s engagements with feminism. Jane Long (2001) suggests that the discourse of a ‘generation war’ has been widely drawn on in the west ever since it gained sustained media attention in the USA in the early nineties. Similarly, Irene Stoehr contended in 1993 that there was a growing interest in theorising generational differences in German academic debates (Stoehr, 1993; see also Landweer, 1993; Kilian and Komfort-Hein, 1999). Ute Gerhard (1999), for example, suggested that young women feel the need to distance themselves from their ‘mothers’, asking for some ‘time-out’ to develop a feminist political agenda suited to their changing needs³. Jane Pilcher (1998) also called attention to the importance of age as a source of difference amongst women when she researched women’s responses to feminism and gender issues. Most recently, Kath Woodward and Sophie Woodward (2009), mother and daughter, engaged in a cross-generational dialogue to discuss key questions and debates in contemporary feminism.

3 In her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy (2005: 74) makes a similar argument. She talks about a “generational rebellion” and argues that young American women embrace raunch culture to distance themselves from second-wave feminists because “[n]obody wants to turn into their mother” (see also Peltola et al., 2004). The debate on feminist generations seems to have been very lively in Australia. In her widely discussed book DIY Feminism, Kathy Bail (1996: 5) uses the term “generational quake” to refer to conflicts among older and younger feminists. Similarly, Catherine Lumby (1997: 156) claims that there is a generational conflict and that the increased institutionalisation of feminism “can look an awful lot like the patriarchy” because feminist ideas and arguments are represented in a variety of institutions and feminism can no longer claim to be outside the system.

However, metaphors of generational differences overlook diversity amongst young women as well as feminists and obscure the historical fluidity of feminism (Griffin, 2001; Long, 2001). The generational framework fails to explore the experiences of those women whose feminist dis-identification does not conform to pre-set generational patterns. Generational discourses posit a static model of engagements with feminism which do not accommodate individuals’ changing perspectives (Long, 2001). In her insightful critique of generational metaphors, Long (2001) emphasises the “extent to which normative generational divisions are connected to Western epistemological and chronological frameworks, which erase cultural and class differences, and which assume certain modes of transmission and generational knowledges as given”. Long takes particular issue with the mother-daughter dynamic that is often employed in theorising the relationship between younger and older women (see Gerhard, above). The mother-daughter dynamic posits universal heterosexuality (Long, 2001) and depicts a hierarchical relationship that restrains the agency of young women (D’Arcens, 1998). It fails to account for complexities and the specific historical context in which negotiations of feminism are embedded (Thon, 2003; Kilian and Komfort-Hein, 1999).

These insights caution against adopting the generational metaphor to explore young women’s repudiations of feminism. Indeed, my research suggests that generational differences play out differently in engagements with feminism. Feminism is not rejected by young women because they want to rebel against their ‘mothers’; instead feminism is itself generationalised. It is frequently allocated to the past and depicted as no longer relevant – to both older and younger women. The concept of postfeminism is particularly useful to grasp the sense that feminism belongs to the past. Of course, postfeminism is a contested term and has been defined in different ways (see Projanski, 2001; Gill, 2007 a). I draw on the work of Gill (2007 a) and McRobbie (2004 a: 4) who state that postfeminism “actively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account in order to suggest that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of meanings which emphasise that it is no longer needed, a spent force”. McRobbie (2004 b: 255) underlines that feminism has to be understood as having passed away for it to be “taken into account”. The construction of feminism’s ‘pastness’ means that feminism is generationalised. Instead of drawing on generational metaphors to describe young women’s repudiation of feminism, it is more useful to use the notion of postfeminism to understand the interplay between feminism, the past and the present.

In a postfeminist era, feminism has achieved the status of Gramscian common sense but, at the same time, is also fiercely repudiated (McRobbie, 2003). It is not surprising that negative stereotypes are attached to feminism. Indeed, feminists have frequently commented on the bad reputation of feminism (Bail, 1996; Rottmann, 1998). In her introduction to the third-wave feminist text Jane sexes it up, Merri Lisa Johnson (2002) claimed that feminism is often addressed by young women as a strict teacher. Crucially, feminism is commonly associated with lesbianism, unfeminine women and man-hating. Discussing the findings of her research on Australian women’s engagements with feminism, Chilla Bulbeck (1997: 4) states that feminists were seen as “man-haters, radicals, lesbians, bra-burners”. More recently, the journalist Tina Schulz (2010) commented that German society has anachronistic views of feminists who are often imagined as women who do not wear any make-up and do not work on their appearance (see also Kramer, 1998). As I will explore in detail, these stereotypes of feminism are structured by, and emerge from, heterosexual conventions. Importantly, these stereotypes are not ‘simply’ stereotypes in this context. By drawing on Ahmed’s (2004b) work on affect, I will show that stereotypes of feminism are ‘sticky signs’. Negative affects – such as unease or hostility – stick to feminism and mean that young women may turn away from it.

It is frequently argued that young women who live in a postfeminist era reject feminism because they think that gender equality has already been achieved (Sharpe, 2001; Rottmann, 1998). Madeleine Jowett (2004: 96), who conducted qualitative research on young women’s attitudes towards feminism in Britain, found that feminism was seen “as something which had contributed to female progress in the past, but was no longer relevant”. Women’s oppression is only recognised as past history (Moeller, 2002; Titus, 2000) and gender equality is perceived as the norm (Volman and Ten Dam, 1998). Feminist perspectives have become such a central part of young women’s lives that they do not have to acknowledge feminism explicitly in order to support gender equality (Budgeon, 2001; Read, 2000).

The young women that I interviewed, however, were aware of gender inequalities. Almost all (38 out of 40) research participants mentioned gender inequalities, most often referring to the pay gap. While they drew on a postfeminist discourse to suggest that feminism was redundant, t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• The Feminist Imagination – Europe and Beyond
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Young Women and Feminism
• 2 Engaging with Feminism in the Postfeminist Era
• 3 Individualisation, Neoliberalism and the Trope of the ‘Oppressed Other Woman’
• 4 ‘Unfeminine, Man-hating and Lesbian’: Situating Stereotypes of Feminists in the Heterosexual Matrix
• 5 Repudiating Feminism: a Performative Approach
• Conclusion: of Wetlands and Alpha-girls
• Annex
• Bibliography
• Index