We’re All Equal Now, So We Should Shut Up and Go Home

Feminism’s over, they say. It’s achieved all its goals. Women are equal now, so we should all shut up and go home. But if feminism has really succeeded, why does it still feel like we’ve got so much further to go?

‘Empowerment’ has been co-opted to mean any choice a woman’s able to make at all, whether or not that’s appearing in Zoo Weekly or having cosmetic surgery to make her body more monotonously mainstream.

Rape and sexual assault is still discussed through the prism of female responsibility, with conviction rates remaining depressingly low. Women are less likely to hold roles in public office or in the public eye at all, with the gender pay gap widening. And that’s just in the West. Women and girls are still the world’s primary victims of rape, violence, lack of education and poverty.

So if this is equality, why does it taste so weak?