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Feminism

I am doing a story for school on the distancing of women from feminism. It seems like most women agree with feminism's goals and principles, but very few would like to call themselves a feminist. If you could answer these questions, that would be great.

 

1. Has there been any major changes in the platform of feminism since it was first started and today?
Absolutely feminism has evolved — in the U.S., the first battle was for basic rights of citizenship (i.e., the right to vote) and then feminists worked to secure more legal rights and now it is evolving into more of an emotion revolution — or ensuring that people actually believe in the equality they are fighting for.

2. Have you seen an increase or a decrease in the number of people visiting your web site?
Increase...and also an increase in the number of feminist related sites that we link to.

3. Have you seen an increase or decrease in the number of younger women calling themselves feminists?
As you mentioned in your premise, people might have problems with the word "feminism," but few take issue with the underlying values of feminism. Thus, we often see people writing to us with that very dilemma: can one be a feminist without necessarily calling oneself a feminist? Absolutely. Statistically, more younger women identify with feminism than any other age demographic.

4. What are you doing to make the term "feminist" more approachable to women?
Feminist.com tells women's stories and in that way immediately demystify what it means to be a feminist. We show people feminism rather than tell people. People's individual relationship to feminism — i.e., those who are experiencing harassment in their workplace, or those who are grappling with whether to let their daughters wear mak up — go a long way toward revealing what feminism is really about.

-- Amy