Generational metaphors are frequently used in discussions about young womenâs engagements with feminism. Jane Long (2001) suggests that the discourse of a âgeneration warâ 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 âmothersâ, asking for some âtime-outâ 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 womenâs 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 âgenerational rebellionâ and argues that young American women embrace raunch culture to distance themselves from second-wave feminists because â[n]obody wants to turn into their motherâ (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 âgenerational quakeâ 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 âcan look an awful lot like the patriarchyâ 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 individualsâ changing perspectives (Long, 2001). In her insightful critique of generational metaphors, Long (2001) emphasises the âextent 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 givenâ. 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 (DâArcens, 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 womenâs 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 âmothersâ; instead feminism is itself generationalised. It is frequently allocated to the past and depicted as no longer relevant â 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 âactively 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 forceâ. McRobbie (2004 b: 255) underlines that feminism has to be understood as having passed away for it to be âtaken into accountâ. The construction of feminismâs âpastnessâ means that feminism is generationalised. Instead of drawing on generational metaphors to describe young womenâs 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 womenâs engagements with feminism, Chilla Bulbeck (1997: 4) states that feminists were seen as âman-haters, radicals, lesbians, bra-burnersâ. 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 âsimplyâ stereotypes in this context. By drawing on Ahmedâs (2004b) work on affect, I will show that stereotypes of feminism are âsticky signsâ. Negative affects â such as unease or hostility â 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 womenâs attitudes towards feminism in Britain, found that feminism was seen âas something which had contributed to female progress in the past, but was no longer relevantâ. Womenâs 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 womenâs 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...