What is the failure of feminism?
Feminists have failed to pursue their agenda of gender equality and have settled for far less. Over a decade, we secured formal legal equality, but progress toward larger social equity reforms appears to have halted. We realised at the time that legal equality was merely the beginning. We realised that true gender equality would necessitate major shifts in masculine cultural power systems. As a result, we devised strategies for revaluing what counts and eradicating gender-biased, masculine-designed cultural dominance. Despite the fact that the majority of the legal impediments were removed, cultural adjustments did not occur. Other modifications were taking place. The political focus has shifted from progressive social transformation to market options and individualised material achievement. Because market competition promotes materialist ideas of what matters, this strategy emphasised machismo and maintained gender disparities.
The more collectivist social roles that are a part of our social infrastructure – which are frequently heavily feminised – are devalued and regarded as private matters. Our early support for raising the proportion of women in positions of power sprang from a confidence that feminists could infiltrate and affect the social and cultural changes we desired, rather than a desire for more women to share male privilege. Now that more women are being allowed to join males in positions of power and influence, they are largely willing to defend the status quo rather than work to improve gender equality.
The second sex
Many women’s organisations are leading for better access to the options available to men on men’s terms. The existing groups appear to have lost the required optimism to identify and lead significant adjustments to the harsh, inequitable, and withering market paradigm, which not only excludes but also has fundamental problems.
The damage to social well-being caused by reliance on unrestricted markets extends far beyond women’s persistent low position. The market model emphasises paid labour alone, neglecting the unpaid, underpaid, and frequently uncounted duties and tasks, and most notably child raising.
Supremacy movement
Feminism has evolved into a supremacy movement that is divorced from reality. It has doctrine and dogma, and in some ways resembles a cult rather than a movement. Searching for solutions to make-believe problems while neglecting real-world issues. Problems are, and then there are some victim’s attitudes which solves nothing. It has become toxic to both women and men.
Mainstream feminism is the problem
Discussions about rape, workplace harassment, pay discrimination, and other feminist problems have finally reached the public. After decades of being mocked for their humorlessness, earnestness, and ideological single-mindedness, A-list celebrities began to embrace the term feminism – a huge shift after decades when feminists were little more than pop culture jokes. Feminism had seemingly become popular overnight. Pop singers used it to promote their albums, men use it to get bedded, models used it to promote their products, and writers used it to promote their work.
Feminism went out of style, as do all trends. And, like all trends, it turned out to be a purely cosmetic shift, distant from most women’s actual lived experience. The gap between prominent feminists and most women’s daily lives has widened and deepened. Poor women, rural women, working women – women, in short, who live outside the sophisticated urban bubbles that mainstream feminists inhabit – feminism, as practised by our most prominent, mediagenic feminists, offers little to address their struggles.
The problem stems from feminism’s abandonment of its primary idea. Traditionally, radical feminists felt that patriarchy and capitalism were inexorably linked, and that the entire structure of our society was built on the exploitation of the poor, women, and people of colour. Women’s liberation necessitated the dismantling of old structures centred on competitiveness, greed, and power.
In feminism, there is still a radical wing. Every day, activists and organisers strive to enhance women’s access to family planning services, establish nonprofit campaigns to combat the inexorable rollback of the welfare state, and combat the neoliberal policy consensus that condemns women, men, and children to extreme inequality and precarity. However, the more prominent voices of mainstream feminism have obscured all of that slow, arduous struggle.
Mainstream feminists try to maintain the status quo by advocating for equal access to the oppressive system. Equal compensation and family leave in the workplace took a backseat to enlightened self-care and achievement.
Mistakes of Feminism
Endorsing the sexual revolution, demonising family life, and asserting there are no differences between men and women are three ways the feminist movement went wrong. What were widely regarded as significant advancements for women came with a cost.
Not only are women unhappy, but men are as well. Many men have abandoned their families, trapping them in a vicious cycle. Men are unable to rise up to be the pillars of their own families and communities because they lack a father figure in their early years.
Feminists must redirect their efforts and focus their energies on re-prioritizing family life and strengthening men-women ties.
A movement that was formerly known for its radical bent has taken on new hues, some of which were conservative. Many women, such as Feminists for Life, who believed passionately in women’s rights but disagreed with the mainstream movement’s position on abortion, remained alienated by the abortion debate. Feminists were also blamed for a slew of negative consequences of the sexual revolution, ranging from an increase in teen pregnancy to the spread of AIDS.
Collective gains can outweigh individual advancement if connections are prioritised over individual advantages. Grassroots initiatives to provide clean water, high-quality public education, and dynamic public spaces, for example, are prized over the accomplishment of a single person. The failure of feminism extends beyond image to imagination: we have all too often failed to truly imagine and modify the experience of women of colour who do not have access to economic resources. This new expression of solidarity will not tolerate a cosy, consumerist approach. Women of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds who want to live fulfilled lives will benefit from a feminism based on solidarity rather than individual accomplishment.
We need feminist-led social equitable goals, rather than leaving answers to the current holders of power or populist alternatives. The macho inclinations in present political trends are undermining key strengths. To balance material and social stability, we must recognise the value of social relationships, cultural needs, and caring for others, which are not covered by economics. All advantages granted on women by their partnership with the upper class or the men must be renounced. That would be feminism in its true sense.
Only a small group of determined and idealistic individuals insist on change, does society move forward. Because a few suffragists were imprisoned and tortured, women were granted the right to vote. While most women’s objectives were constrained to becoming wives and mothers during the peak of second-wave feminism, radical thinkers and reformers took up the fight against uneven pay, sexual harassment in the workplace, and abortion restrictions. Today, we must continue that fight; not just to get more women into the boardroom, but to build ways of living and working that are based on values other than money and success. It may appear that women have failed because we dreamed too big. Women, in reality, lost because our dreams were too small.