Feminism is passé because it worked

In the clip for her song Stupid Girls, 26-year-old spiky-haired American singer Pink (real name Alecia Moore) mocks her celebrity contemporaries: pop singer Jessica Simpson, actor Lindsay Lohan and heiress Paris Hilton. In the video clip, Pink - who calls herself a feminist - sends up Simpson's bikini car-wash video clip, Lohan's bad driving and Hilton's vacant smile.

"In the 1950s, women were supposed to just smile and stay in the kitchen. Now we're supposed to just smile and run around and look sexy. The big difference is, instead of men telling us to do this, we're doing it to ourselves," a frustrated Pink told the New York Daily News last year.

She's not the only one who feels that the present generation of young women have taken the status of women backwards. Australian feminist Anne Summers will tell anyone who'll listen that we have reached "the end of equality". Body Shop founder Anita Roddick has criticised pop stars such as Beyonce and Kylie Minogue for portraying sex work, lap dancing and what Roddick calls a "pimp or whore" culture as cool and sexy. And in March Germaine Greer gave Australian women a serve for not protesting against a television ad for Holden four-wheel-drives that poked fun at men for lusting after cars and women.

"How much humiliation are you women up for?" Greer asked at an International Women's Day function on the Gold Coast.

The message from feminist activists from the '60s, '70s and '80s is that young women today are letting the team down. Just as Summers famously accused my age group of about 30 to 45-year-old generation X-ers of dropping the feminist baton, now the female members of generation Y (aged about 15 to 30) are copping it for using and abusing the freedoms won by the warriors of the first and second waves of feminism.

As a lecturer in journalism at two Queensland universities during the past five years, I've spent a lot of time with gen-Y women. My impression is that the reality of being a young woman in the new millennium is more about complex value shifts than turning back the equality clock, as some of the older feminists simplistically imply.

Although most of these women don't call themselves feminists and don't wish to ally themselves with feminism, there are many indicators that young women have absorbed feminist messages and are living feminist lives.

The successes of feminism sowed the seeds of its failure, argues generation X-er Rebecca Huntley, author of The World According to Y (Allen & Unwin, 2006). Huntley believes Y women take the equality of the sexes for granted: "Young men and women have internalised feminism to such an extent that many of them question its relevance as a social movement."

It's a relevance thing. Gen-Y women did not live through the second wave of feminism; for many of them, it has passed into history.

Very few young Australian women today realise that 30 or 40 years ago a woman could not get served in a public bar in Queensland or that women could not get a bank loan without their husband's signature and had to resign from the public service if they married.

The history of feminism as a social movement is heavily embedded in the social studies and civics sections of school curricula, but it's an optional study stream along with the history of race relations, the environment movement and unions. A friend who teaches at a prominent Brisbane high school tells me most teachers choose not to teach feminism and most students choose not to do their assignments on it. Does that lack of knowledge mean feminism has failed?

As someone who was a feminist activist throughout the '90s, campaigning for improved portrayal of women in the media, I reckon we should not get too hung up on the labelling or image of feminism. The truth is: feminism worked. It took. And the way young women live today is the evidence. There is still a long way to go, but we should recognise and celebrate the effects of feminism on the present generation of young women.

A few years ago, Britain's Demos foundation surveyed what it called the Seven Million generation:the seven million people in Britain aged 18 to 34. Its report was called No Turning Back: Generations and the Genderquake. It found that "the cultural and economic enfranchisement of women is deep-rooted and irreversible ... The advance of women in our culture and parts of the economy is shifting the debate away from the assumptions both of defenders of more traditional values and of an earlier generation of feminists. An older agenda of rights is being superseded by a much more complex set of issues: overwork for some, underwork for others, discrimination against men as well as women, sexual harassment by women as well as men; coping with cultural barriers to male adaptation as well as the remaining barriers for women."

The study found that British values have been feminised to the extent that core values can readily be identified as feminine. Surveys of British schoolgirls found they have greater self-esteem and are happier than their male peers; they are also more ambitious than boys, likelier to want to continue in education and less likely to want to start a family when they leave school.

These findings would not necessarily translate directly to Australia, with its highly masculinised culture, but some of the value shifts demonstrated by young people in Britain are also evident in Australia.

For example, Sydney magazine editor Louise Stansfield, 27, is an articulate spokeswoman for her generation. She edits Frankie, a successful magazine going into its second year that is targeted at women in their 20s. Frankie has a rebellious tone and offers an alternative to what Stansfield calls "formulaic, stereotypical publishing".

Frankie is an interesting mix of fashion, art, popular culture and think pieces written by young freelancers. It may juxtapose a piece explaining the situation in the Middle East with an article on the best second-hand shops along the east coast for buying funky sunglasses. The magazine's slogan is: "Change is one thing I don't mind." Frankie mixes it up and celebrates the choices young women have today.

Stansfield, who took women's studies at university, attributes many of the freedoms she enjoys today to feminism but doesn't call herself a feminist. She has a more thoughtful approach to gender issues than perhaps some of the older feminists give her generation credit for.

"I wouldn't associate myself with Germaine Greer," Stansfield says. "She represents an unbalanced view of feminism. She comes across as anti-men. I wanted Frankie to be man-friendly. When Greer criticised Australian women for not protesting about that Holden ad, I felt really angry because she was patronising Australian women as a whole. Does she really think we are stupid enough to take that ad seriously? The ad didn't take power away from women; it took power away from Holden.

"The men in my life don't support those ads; they are smart and educated and believe in equality. They are not old school.

"Who's to say I wouldn't be a feminist activist if I couldn't live my life the way I want? But I don't really distinguish myself as a woman. I don't feel restricted in any way. I've never faced any walls in my career. My friends all have careers and we are not under the rule of a man in any way or getting their dinner when they get home. Is that because of feminism? Definitely. I think women my age are travelling well. They have got their heads on right."

In my experience of teaching Gen Y women and men, they do largely have their heads on right, but they also have some things to learn about the history of feminism. Before they diss feminists such as Greer for being too hard-nosed, they could learn a bit about why warrior women had to slice off one breast to use a bow and arrow to pierce some sense of justice into men's hearts. It hurts a bit to hear young women say how disfigured the warriors are from the battle for the freedoms that young women enjoy.

There has been a complex shift in values that has not been mapped in Australia. The authors of the Demos survey mentioned above conclude that for the women's movement there is a fundamental problem.

"The very identity of the movement is predicated on the need for a separate agenda for women," they write. "In the post-equality generation the convergence between men's attitudes and women's cannot be ignored. Young men and women increasingly have similar attitudes not only to work and politics but even to feminism. In terms of political tactics, women's issues should no longer be seen in isolation."

If you look at Australian women in the vanguard - the under-30s elite, university-educated and pushing the boundaries - and compare them with the same elite in the past four decades, it's clear women have come a long way. Young women today have a more sophisticated analysis and framing of social issues, they are more confident, increasingly free, less vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. They are not only ordering drinks at the public bars, they are winning pub trivia competitions. They are not deluded about the problems in society, including the continuing problems for women.

After hanging out with young women in a university environment, I find my gen-X cynicism slipping off a bit. I look at young women and young men today as they listen respectfully to each other in tutorials, as they choose assignments on issues of social injustice and write them with great compassion and empathy, and I feel refreshed. I reckon they are all right.