A Women’s Place?

Feminism and femininity are the new “F” words. I would say all my students are feminists – they believe in equality for women – but they are reluctant to identify themselves that way. Feminism has acquired many negative connotations, which have been created partly by the media and partly by feminists themselves. I encourage my students to embrace feminism and show them that you can be successful and powerful and still be feminine.

I always felt like a feminist, even when I was a child although I couldn’t put a name to it. I had an epiphany moment at university. In my first lecture on women’s writing, the lecturer quoted the first line of the famous feminist work, The Madwoman in the Attic – “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” I remember suddenly thinking, “yes, it is!”, and I had to go back and reread all the classics from a completely different perspective. That lecture made me want feminism in my life and career.

Contradiction is the keyword for 21st Century feminism. I do housework. I wear make-up and sometimes a short skirt. I’m married and hope to have children. I’m also a member of a feminist association and have a weakness for shopping and celebrity magazines. What does this make me? I don’t believe that to be a feminist you have to be a certain way. There’s not the same tension between feminism and femininity that there was in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s not black and white anymore and that’s both challenging and exciting.

I have mixed feelings about ‘Girl Power’. On the one hand, it was positive for a generation of girls who found it was OK to be a girl, to get together with their friends and assert their femininity. It was all about being both powerful and feminine. However, the Spice Girls were, ultimately, a band manufactured by men as a consumer product and they presented a neatly packaged version of female empowerment that was acceptable to the media.

I don’t object to Katie Price as a role model for young women. But I’d be worried if she was the only role model they had. She’s not a particularly bad role model, but is she challenging any stereotypes or making girls think about what it means to be successful as a woman? Other role models have to be pushed and I don’t see the media doing that. Hilary Clinton, for example, has been criticised on all levels, when we should be celebrating women like her.

I’ve always had strong female role models in my life. My mother and grandmother were very strong women who always worked for a living, so I was brought up thinking that was how life was. Growing up in Luxembourg, I enjoyed a relatively privileged upbringing. I never thought that this was an excuse not to engage with feminism, nor do I think that it is detrimental to my being a feminist. Being privileged doesn’t mean you have to be ignorant.

I wonder why women today aren’t angrier. There is a lot of complacency, especially among students. They think there is equality because they’re at university and don’t see inequality at first hand. But there is still a gender pay gap – women are paid on average 20% less than men across the EU – and attitudes to motherhood, particularly single mothers, and childcare are deplorable. And that’s before you consider the global context. Every 10 minutes, a woman gets raped somewhere in the world. Women are suffering from trafficking, violence, poverty, honour killings. To think that we’re there, that we’ve got equality, that feminism is somehow redundant, is ridiculous.

Edge Hill’s links with women’s rights mean a lot to me. Some of the most vocal and active members of the suffragette movement were teachers or students here and that is very inspiring. I’m proud that Edge Hill is hosting this year’s Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Conference at the Bluecoat in Liverpool. The conference is looking at the transitions in feminism from early feminists like the suffragettes to what feminism might look like in the future. Feminism has certainly changed in the new millennium and the conference gives us an opportunity to discuss those changes. We don’t need to all agree on what feminism is, but as long as we practise conflict constructively we are engaging in feminist work.

Stéphanie Genz’s latest book, Postfemininities in Popular Culture, is available now, published by Palgrave Macmillan.