I think another reason that it seems like there is less of a feminist movement is that many of the issues fought for, particularly in the last half of the 20th century, can now be confronted through the courts or HR departments or the police and rarely requires taking to the streets.
Discrimination obviously still happens in promotions and salary and harassment and domestic violence and non-domestic violence, but the laws of many nations now explicitly make such discrimination illegal. So instead of organizing a movement to seek redress, women can now appeal to institutional resolution processes. Again, those processes don't always work, but I think that for better or worse they have replaced activism.
However I do NOT think the feminist movement is smaller than it once was. In fact, I think it is exponentially larger than it was even 20 years ago. It may not be in the streets but it is very often now built in to the belief system girls grow up with. It is at the core of the micro-credit movement. It is in universities where the head of Harvard gets excoriated for saying women can't do science as well as men -- and it's not just "radical" feminists who attack him, but editorials in mainstream newspapers and equal numbers of male and female academics.
I think young women who say they are not feminists are simply lacking a decent history lesson. Of course they are feminists. It take a lot of effort not to be, because they would have to make a concerted effort to reject the improvements in opportunities and responsibilities gained over the past 50 or 100 years.
I think another reason that it seems like there is less of a feminist movement is that many of the issues fought for, particularly in the last half of the 20th century, can now be confronted through the courts or HR departments or the police and rarely requires taking to the streets.
Discrimination obviously still happens in promotions and salary and harassment and domestic violence and non-domestic violence, but the laws of many nations now explicitly make such discrimination illegal. So instead of organizing a movement to seek redress, women can now appeal to institutional resolution processes. Again, those processes don't always work, but I think that for better or worse they have replaced activism.
However I do NOT think the feminist movement is smaller than it once was. In fact, I think it is exponentially larger than it was even 20 years ago. It may not be in the streets but it is very often now built in to the belief system girls grow up with. It is at the core of the micro-credit movement. It is in universities where the head of Harvard gets excoriated for saying women can't do science as well as men -- and it's not just "radical" feminists who attack him, but editorials in mainstream newspapers and equal numbers of male and female academics.
I think young women who say they are not feminists are simply lacking a decent history lesson. Of course they are feminists. It take a lot of effort not to be, because they would have to make a concerted effort to reject the improvements in opportunities and responsibilities gained over the past 50 or 100 years.